Chapter Seven
"Arwen!" Celebrian pressed her hands over mouth and froze where she stood on the balcony overlooking the dawn. Her shawl fell from her shoulders as she ran into the study. She laid her hands on her daughter's face and stared, her blue eyes wide. Elladen and Elrohir back away when their mother charged at them.
Arwen flinched at how hot her mother's hands were. Without her brothers, she had to keep her own balance and her weak knees were nothing to bear her heavy heart.
Celebrian stared into her daughter's eyes, so overwhelmed with shadow the grey had been swallowed up by pure black. Arwen's bloodless lips and cheeks, her cold flesh marked her with mortality.
"Naneth…" Arwen clung to her.
"Come, sit down," Celebrian said, her words slowed with her efforts to calm her voice. She schooled the fear out of her features as she moved about the room gathering a glass, a bottle of wine, and the platter of her own breakfast just delivered while she had stood in the fresh air. Her rejuvenation now proved to be temporary.
"Drink this," she said as she poured the glass three-quarters full with white wine. "All of it."
Arwen took the glass and downed half of it with a grimace on her face before she had to pause.
"Sit with her," Celebrian said to Elrohir. She squeezed his shoulder but was otherwise too frantic to rejoice in his return. Holding her elder son's gaze, she silently demanded he follow her. She took their discussion down a flight of stairs and into a narrow corridor meant only for coming and going; it was shadowed by the study balcony above, with hardly enough room for them to stand side by side.
"What happened?" she asked, her forced calm cracking, her renewed strength rapidly waning.
"Ada said he needed help and I went with him to King Thranduil's sickroom," Elladen replied, speaking quickly, as if it were a tale he had been waiting to tell. "He said Thranduil had gotten worse and he needed athelas for treatment."
Elladen either did not notice or was too obedient to stop when Celebrian's eyes grew wide at the name of the herb.
"Arwen was sitting on the bed with him, holding his hand. She looked a little frightened but not unwell. She said she felt fine," Elladen insisted. "I left right after that."
"And this morning?"
"When Elrohir and I came to deliver the athelas, she looked unrested, maybe, but not like that. Ada told her she wasn't to come back." Elladen became more undone by the moment. He leaned against the wall, dropped his gaze to the floor. "What's happening, Naneth?"
"If your father turned to athelas, then it will be over soon," Celebrian replied, folding her arms around herself. "Athelas is an ancient remedy for old and terrible magic thought to be long gone from the world."
Elladen's head snapped up, his face pale and full of pain.
"Arwen will recover," Celebrian said. "She would not have been in contact with it for long. And I'm sure Elrohir will have her spirits back up in no time."
Comforted with that, the tense fear left Elladen's body and he wilted with relief, with exhaustion. Celebrian was thankful for that at least; any questions beyond those, she had no answer for. Only terrible memory of an evil that had almost annihilated the world, a fight that could have taken her husband before she had even met him, built a family and a haven with him. Thranduil had barely survived the same war. Sacrifices that had won them all peace at last, or had it only bought them an illusion? Thranduil had found the love of his life, built a family and a haven with her only for hundred of years to collapse and bring him back to the cruelty and brutality of war. Darkness and evil descending on the age of peace, the age of their children. Nazgûl and orc raids and bloodshed.
"Shall we go back?" Celebrian asked gently. For a moment, the tall Elven warrior across from her became a little boy once again, thoughtful and quiet, kept from being too grim with the help of his younger brother's mischievous spirit and easy smile.
Elladen nodded, but it was a long moment's effort before he stood up straight. Celebrian kept behind him, watching the tension of his older-brother comportment work through his shoulders.
Celebrian felt her own strength shudder though her. Enough to elevate her past fear, enough for Arwen, enough for her sons, enough for Elrond, enough to face what began to stir again in the deepest dark of Middle Earth. Not in thirteen hundred years had she felt the full magnitude of the magic and might of her Noldor blood.
On their return to the study, they found Arwen clinging to Elrohir's shoulders, weeping loudly. He had closed his arms around her, but there was little else to be done while Arwen trembled and cried without restraint.
"Arwen." Celebrian knelt beside her children and pried Arwen's fingers from Elrohir's cloak. She collected Arwen's cold hands in hers and blew on them, rubbed them to encourage some warmth.
"I can't—I can't…" Arwen half-screamed, breathless from her hitching sobs.
"This will run its course," Celebrian assured her.
"Imladris was burning!"
"It was only a dream." Celebrian brushed back the strands of dark hair that stuck to Arwen's tears. "This is the work of dark magic, but it will fade."
"What about Ada?" Elladen asked. "If this is from contact with—"
"We must leave him to finish his work or Thranduil will certainly die," Celebrian said firmly. "I don't want any of you to go near that room until your father says it is safe."
Elladen nodded. Before Elrohir could dissent, his elder brother grasped his shoulder and steered him out to the balcony.
Arwen still fought to stop her tears, to take rein over her delirium, but her struggle only exhausted her. Each heave of her shoulders seemed like it could collapse her, her fear still burning on whatever it could find within her. At least it brought colour and warmth back to her, though it carried her beyond health and into fever. Arwen's sobs gave way to gasps and small cries.
"Even if you don't feel like it, you need to eat something," Celebrian said.
Arwen took a few attempts to master her breath before she bit into the waybread Celebrian held out for her. She frowned in disgust, but kept chewing.
"Once you rest for a while you'll feel better. I promise."
With some coaxing, Arwen lay down on the cushions spread across the bench. Her eyes had returned to their true grey, but they were stormy and haunted.
"Don't go," she begged her mother, grasping at her hands, up her arms.
"I must fetch something for you, but I will be back soon." Celebrian pressed her forehead to her daughter's. "Your brothers are here if you need anyone."
Arwen nodded, but it was still Celebrian who had to remove herself from her grip. As she made her way back to the stairs, Celebrian caught Elladen's gaze where he stood on the balcony and inclined her head to indicate where Arwen was laying. Elladen nodded and immediately headed inside, leaving Elrohir to watch over the world.
Celebrian swept silent down the stairs. She still wore the gown and robe she had on two nights ago, when all this had started. She had not been back to her own chambers since then and only now did she truly consider what had happened before Thranduil had arrived. The memory of the cold that had struck her heart was not so far away as it had felt and Celebrian had to pause and wait for it to pass. She had thought it was Aradess' death she had sensed, but it was the curse Thranduil bore. If she had had more that mere moments between her premonition and the shocking arrival of the bloodied King of Mirkwood on her doorstep, she might have realized, but then so much had carried her away; the spell she had put over Thranduil, what it had done to her, what it had done to him. She had left him undefended to the Black Breath's corruption, thrust him deep underwater to drown. He had borne it all the way from Mirkwood; it was a marvel he was still alive. And Elrond had been closed in a room with it for days.
The recent events had sent the other inhabitants of Imladris deep within their own homes and Celebrian met no one as she ran through the corridors. She came up to the sickroom, but kept a safe distance. There was a slow, deep pulse on the air, striking her oldest memories, her oldest fears.
"Elrond," she called up the corridor to the silent, empty doorway. "Elrond, if there is enough athelas, I would like to prepare a tincture for Arwen."
"Is she all right?" The voice—thin, strained, shaking—was hardly recognizable as her husband's.
She took two steps closer to the room. "She dreamt Imladris was burning. It upset her quite violently and she's been through enough these past days."
"I didn't… I didn't think she would do what she did. This wasn't…"
Three steps closer. Celebrian's ears prickled at the hum of magic from within. "She took drastic measures in the care of her fellow being. She must be your daughter."
Elrond laughed, a fragile thing that could easily have been a sob.
"When you're done, I want you to come with me," Celebrian said. "You need respite from this."
Elrond came into the doorway, leaning heavily against the frame. He held a cloth in his hands that he wrung and unravelled, wrung and unravelled. His eyes were rimmed with red, lines were etched around his frown. Where Arwen had been directly affected by the Black Breath, Elrond looked ready to collapse from fighting it.
"How is he?" Celebrian asked.
"I don't know what good any remedy will do after he's carried it for this long," Elrond replied, staring down at his hands. "And I don't know how he'll survive both the Black Breath and the knowledge that his wife is dead. I don't know how any of this has happened. I don't know what to do."
"Elrond, that is the darkness speaking." Celebrian was only a step away from him now. "If he's resting, you should come away for an hour and recover."
"I don't want him to wake up alone." A single tear stole down Elrond's face.
"One hour," Celebrian said again. "The darkness with dissipate with the athelas, and we will each take watch over him."
Elrond looked back over his shoulder and took a deep breath. "I'll prepare that tincture and we'll take it to Arwen."
Celebrian waited for her husband to re-emerge and they walked together through to pale, cool afternoon. She took his hand and said nothing as he leaned heavily against her.