Chapter Twelve
"How could you let my son see me like this!" Thranduil hissed. He closed his eyes and tried to summon the magic buried beneath days of darkness and suffering. Immaculate flesh flickered over the burns, the scars, but vanished instantly. He tried again, but this time the glamour faded not just to age-old scars. His body was covered in blood as if the injuries had just been made. The burns wept gore and melted flesh, the slash from Dagorlad that circled his back gushed, split open over tissue and bone.
Thranduil screamed with the pain of every injury in his thousands of years. Elrond pressed down on the open wound from instinct alone; he knew naught but horror to see so much blood so suddenly.
A moment later the blood was gone, the wounds healed over. The flood of red that had stained Thranduil's skin disappeared, an illusion, the glamour's backlash.
"Stop," Elrond said, still clutching Thranduil's side, his voice small with fear.
Whether by exhaustion or by his own will, Thranduil sank heavy and still into the bed.
"I heard her voice," Thanduil said. "I heard her singing."
"A dream," Elrond said. He collected his still-shaking hands into his lap.
"What did you do to me that you could not do for her?" Thranduil's grief turned to rage. His right eye shed tears, but his voice came out hotly forged from the fire inside him.
"Thranduil, she was already dead. You were half-mad with grief and pain," Elrond said. "If there was anything—anything—I could have done, I would have. We summoned Legolas as soon as we could."
"How merciful Lord Elrond is to expose my son to this suffering." Thranduil moved his gaze to the window. "You have given him hope where there is none."
"Don't say that. Your injuries are—"
"Aradess is dead," Thranduil said, the fire in his voice extinguished. "My wife is dead. Murdered. And I did nothing. I don't even remember…"
"Thranduil." Galadriel's deep voice tolled like a bell, the sound resonating through any heart that heard her.
Thranduil winced and paled. He felt as if he were one sensation away from death as his weak heart shuddered in his breast. He could not escape her when she circled to the far side of the bed and filled the vision of his functioning eye. She clasped his forearm like a comrade on the battlefield.
"If you are here to tell me her death is part of a grand cosmic design, you can leave now." Cold tingled up his arm, chilling down to his blood. Thranduil saw Aradess lying on a stone catafalque, shrouded up to her throat in pale linen. Her flesh was grey, even her hair was less vivid than it had been in life. But her emerald pendant glittered, small and shining.
"I would say no such thing," Galadriel said. "This was senseless violence, a return to the darkest of days. Aradess is among the first victims of a coming war, Thranduil. But she was also our first warrior."
Thranduil grasped Galadriel's arm and the vision flooded into him.
Aradess stared up from where she lay on the ground, winded and bruised from the blunt strike to her abdomen. The night was bright with the stars they had come to worship, but the pure light faded behind the smoke and the screams
An orc came to stand by her feet, sniffing the air—relishing the reek of death and blood, perhaps. Aradess swept her legs under it to knock it to the ground. She wrestled on top of it, her ankles pinning its wrists, her knees its shoulders. Fighting its sword from its hand, she deftly, brutally stabbed the blade through its ribs to into its heart.
She looked up at the deadly swirls of black and white across the field. Orcs killed without quarter, Elves fought for weapons to defend themselves.
Aradess tore out the sword from her victim and hamstrung an orc running past her. It dropped to its knees with a howl and she cut of its head, its black blood spraying across her white clothes. She pulled the bow from its grip and looked about her.
"Thorod!"
Free from combat for the moment, the captain of the royal guard sprinted toward her. He caught the bow she threw to him and came up to collect the arrows from the quiver across the dead orc's back.
"Are you all right, my lady?" Thorod was stained from heel to crown in mud and blood, his green eyes huge and shining in his face. Aradess could not tell if he was wounded, but he seemed to be standing well enough.
She nodded and stood up, sword in hand. "Where is he?"
She searched the chaotic melee. "Search to the north. I'll go south."
"I can't leave you, my lady. I'm sworn to protect the crown."
"You are sworn to obey!" Aradess shouted at him. "Go!"
She took off in her intended direction before Thorod could voice further dissent. Though it slowed her search, she cut down any enemies she could; few of her subjects, her friends had such a chance to exact justice on their attackers. So much screaming, so many pale bodies writhing in pain in the mud, so many completely still. If she were not so driven to attack, to see every drop of orc blood spilled, she would have collapsed with fear.
She did not want to call his name, did not want him to identify himself if he was still standing. If…
A huge shadow moved against the treeline, exposing the hem of a white robe, the edges of a tall body, cascade of pale blonde hair.
Aradess sprinted for them, winding the sword behind her for a powerful strike. She swung up along the large orc's side and severed its right arm at the shoulder. It roared and wildly wheeled around. Without hesitating, Aradess leapt high and kicked it across the face. It dropped to its knees and remaining hand and Aradess thrust her sword down through the centre of it with a feral scream.
Thranduil stood against a tree, a knife impaling his left hand. His arm was already stained with so much blood. He hung heavy and lifeless.
Aradess cupped one hand under his chin and lifted his face. "Thranduil…"
She pressed her ear to his chest, the weak, lagging beat of his heart echoing in her head like blasts. Rising up on her toes, she reached for the knife in his hand. The first fingertip that touched it burned on contact and searing pain roared through her veins. She examined her finger and for a moment it was spiderwebbed with dark blue veins. The poison reached down beneath her wedding band then dissipated. That was after only one second of contact. How long had Thranduil been here?
The screams from the field behind her went quiet as her mind raced. Her people were dying. But her husband…
"Thranduil. Thranduil, look at me," she said, taking his face in her hand again. There was not the slightest stirring in his features. Aradess kissed him, felt how cold he was becoming.
With a rallying cry, Aradess grabbed the knife hilt again and tried to pull it out. The last thing she heard was a guttural, scraping voice she thought the world would never hear again. The last thing she saw, a shadow deeper and darker than anything she had ever known.
"Got 'em both," a deep voice said.
"Guess the blades work."
Aradess opened her eyes just enough to see several boots standing around her in the mud. She discreetly cast around herself for the sword she'd had.
"Master won't be happy unless we got the princeling too."
Legolas! They would not find him here, but anyone willing to launch such a savage attack would not stop before they had hunted down the last of their quarry.
"Search the bodies. If you find him, bring him here. We'll have him begging for death if he ain't dead already. Kill the wounded. Master wants these people broken before he moves in."
It took all of her strength for Aradess to keep herself still. Let them think she was dead. Let them walk away. She no longer cared if she was unarmed—she would kill them all with her bare hands if she had to.
She watched the boots stomp away. She was trembling with rage. Those second she waited for them to turn from her felt longer than a thousand years. Aradess craned her head to see their positions as the orcs walked back towards the massacre. Not one looked back at her.
She saw the sword just a short reach away from her outstretched left hand. She picked it up, gathered her limbs under her into a crouch, and sprang to attack.
She ran the first one through and took the knife from its belt to slash its throat before it could cry out. She threw the knife to strike down the next one in the temple. She was almost upon the killing field and knew she would be spotted. There were seven orcs standing.
Aradess leapt onto the back of one, seized its chin and forehead, and snapped its neck, somersaulting off as it fell forward. An arrow whistled past her ear as she came up to her knees. Three orcs charged towards her. She tore a broken lantern post and poised it as a spear.
The orc on her left was quickest to reach her. She blocked his sword and the blade stuck in the wood. She wrenched the sword out of its hand as she swung the post to strike the next orc across the face. This one wore a helmet and only staggered from the blow, but it was enough time to turn back to the now-unarmed orc. She swung the post back, dropped to one knee, and rammed the broken end through the top of the orc's throat.
Aradess had not taken up arms in true combat in centuries, but her instincts were still precise and deadly, sharpened even further when she thought of these creatures hunting down her son. She remained hopeful that they had mistaken Thranduil for dead as they had her; she tried not to think anymore about that terrible blade and whatever poison or dark work was in her husband's blood.
She took out the next two orcs and picked up a bow and single arrow to shoot down another. She dropped the weapon and carried on. Only her singular focus kept her from feeling disturbed as she jumped over the bloodied Elven bodies. She chased her quarry towards the horizon paling with the first light of dawn.
The terrible terrain emboldened one of the orcs to turn and charge her. It tackled her to the ground and as she fought she felt her limbs hitting the bodies around her. For all her thrashing, she did not have the weight to overthrow it. Hands closed around her throat and all the bulk of the orc's misshapen body crushed down on her windpipe. She clawed, she kicked, she choked out curses.
An Elf appeared over the orc's shoulder and drove a knife into the orc's back over and over again, half-screaming, half-laughing in her brutal vengeance. The orc dropped heavily onto Aradess, still and bleeding, driving out the last of her breath.
Aradess' rescuer hauled the body off of her and then collapsed herself. A huge wound gaped across her hips and a broken arrow shaft stuck out from beneath her ribs.
"Rîs-nín…" the woman muttered as she fell back. She held up the Elven knife dripping with dark blood. "A-acharn…"
Aradess accepted the knife. "Acharn."
The woman deserved more than to bleed to death next to the abomination she had cut down. More that to watch her queen walk away from her. But Aradess had no choice.
Aradess sprinted faster as the bodies grew thinner on the ground. The two remaining orcs had gained much ground while she had grappled with their brother. She stopped and took steady aim at the farthest one, and threw the Elven knife. It spun through the air and Aradess swore that if no divine being watching over her people guided her blade to its mark, she would lose her faith altogether.
The orc arched as the knife lodged into its spine, staggered its last steps, and fell. The final orc, following several yards behind, stopped to watch its last comrade die. It just stood there as Aradess kept sprinting toward it. She watched its shoulders bristle, watched it slowly turn its head. All of its movements were so slow that the twitch of its arm seemed lightning fast by comparison.
Aradess had nearly come to a halt before she realized she had stopped running at all. She glared down at her legs to command them to move and saw the knife—so small it was little more than a dart—deep in her stomach. A halo of blood began to seep around it.
The orc was grinning when she looked up at it. She smirked in return. The immortal grace within her powered her past her own pain. Aradess charged at her foe. She slid through the wide stance of its legs, intent on retrieving the knife from the body several steps away. The orc caught the edge of her gown and yanked her back to the ground as she was rising to her feet. One heavy boot came down hard on her stomach, on the hilt of the knife in her stomach. She did not know if she screamed; she blacked out for what felt like ages but could only have been seconds as she found the orc staring down at her. She raised both arms above her head and crashed her joined hands against the orc's knee with all her strength. It buckled and she seized its ankle to unbalance it completely. The orc fell to the ground wildly flailing its limbs. Aradess wrestled on top of it, but only had the advantage of surprise for a few moments. The orc bent its legs against her body and threw her over to land hard on her back.
She had no weapon, her strength was waning fast. She was very aware of the life draining out of her now, though she felt little pain through her desperation to kill this thing. This was how people died. She imagined Legolas smiling as he turned back for one last wave to his parents as he left for Lorien days before. She imagined Thranduil appearing behind her in the looking glass as they prepared for the festival only a few hours ago. He had placed the ornate hair pin she now wore into her auburn braids, her own star to glitter on earth while all the Elves turned their faces to the sky.
As the orc maneuvered to get on top of her again, Aradess pulled the large silver pin from the back of her head and as the orc reached its hands for her throat, she thrust the pin deep into its neck, sawing it through muscles and veins and flesh. The orc sputtered several breaths. Its hands went to its own throat, weakly grabbing at Aradess' hands, but she did not stop. She drew more and more blood until the orc went limp and fell off of her.
The field was silent then but for Aradess' own thin breaths. No more screams, no more pain. She had taken vengeance for her people and soon she would greet them again in paradise. She could forget the twisted faces she had seen in the mud, in the fighting. She would miss Legolas. She held onto the memory of kissing his brow before he had left, the warmth and smell of his hair in the sunlight. Her son, her true immortality.
"Aradess!"
Thranduil was alive. Aradess felt herself shiver with relief… with the cold that had come over her… with the effort it took to breathe. But when it came, her last breath was easy, heavy. Her heart was full of peace to think of her husband and her son in this, the last moment of her eternal life.