In which the Elven healers reach Dale (and find it worse off than they thought), they discover just why Menelwen is ill (and how dangerous it could prove), and Thranduil goes to see just what the hell is going on (and regrets it). Funnily enough, this chapter took so long because I've been sick myself.

When the healers made ready to go to Dale, Tauriel went with them.

The King hadn't wanted to let her – she was, theoretically, needed more in the forest – but Menelwen was one of her guards, and Tauriel left her there. Menelwen's illness was indirectly her responsibility.

"Very well," he'd said, "but none of you can return until this malady is spent."

"I know, my lord. We all do."

Her little party set off in the salmon light of sunrise – guards and healers on horseback, with two carts of medical supplies. This soon after winter, Dale had to be running low.

Tauriel hoped – oh, she hoped – that the King's missive was somehow wrong. Anything that could fell one of the Eldar had to be beyond terrible.

It had to be new.

Menelwen was and remained incredibly disturbed.

Still she coughed, but that was all she did. There were no chills, no ache in her joints, and though Astrid had no way of gauging if she had a fever – Elf bodies ran cooler than those of the Edain – they both suspected she didn't have one. And yet, she coughed.

Many others were not so lucky. The two hall had been given over to the sick, laid out in rows on beds manhandled from various houses. To her sensitive nose, it smelled awful, though she and the other healers did what they could to keep their patients clean. Sheets had been hung between the beds, to give them an illusion of privacy, but the thin fabric did nothing to mask the sound of coughing.

Strangely, not many had died, and Astrid was baffled by the few who had.

"It's the old and the children you've got to worry for, with things like this," she said. She was scrubbing soiled linen, the water in the tub dyed pale brown. "Yet here we are."

Here they were indeed. Their three casualties had been in the prime of their lives, for Edain – two men and a woman, all healthy and strong. They had sickened quite suddenly, and within hours, their faces had turned an alarming shade of blue that none of the healers had ever seen before. By the end of the day, they were dead.

Menelwen didn't know what to say. She didn't know what to do. Mercifully, some appeared to be recovering, but so very few. Most were lingering, delirious, barely able to take water or broth.

Lorna, incredibly, was still hanging on, though she looked half dead. Her cough had taken on a wet, ugly sound that Astrid said was a good thing – it meant she would be bringing up the sickness in her lungs, and was no longer contagious.

Menelwen went to her now, out of sheer curiosity. Though her face was outright grey, there was a deep flush across her cheeks and nose – her fever still raged, despite their best efforts. A wiry woman to begin with, she now looked skeletal, her eyes sunken and cheeks hollow.

What did you bring us, ettelëa? Menelwen wondered, taking her wrist. Astrid had taught her how to read an Edain's pulse, and Lorna's still fluttered like a hummingbird. Her body was fighting this invader tooth and nail, and though it appeared to be winning, it was only just. Her skin felt like a frying-pan beneath Menelwen's fingers. She had always thought Edain fragile creatures, yet Lorna and several others seemed determined to prove her wrong.

The woman's vivid eyes, fever-bright, found her, and seemed to halfway focus. She said something, but it was in her own language, or one of them; her occasionally confused rambling seemed to encompass two, one rather more musical than the other.

"You are more trouble than you are worth," Menelwen sighed in Sindarin.

"Thanks so much," Lorna slurred – also in Sindarin, albeit with a very heavy accent.

Menelwen froze. The tiny woman struggled with Westron – why would she know Sindarin? "What was that?"

Lorna spoke again in her own tongue, but at the end of the sentence was, "—was what?" in semi-clear Sindarin. "You miss home, but more are here. I feel them, but I can't hear them." The last sentence was a garble of Sindarin and Westron, but still just comprehensible enough.

Menelwen stared at her, the chill of the unknown creeping through her veins. "What are you?"

The woman shrugged, or tried to. "I do not know anymore. Your friends are close," she added in Westron. "Go find them. I will try not to die while you are away."

Tauriel had never seen the streets of Dale so quiet. Whatever malady had befallen this place, it was worse than she thought.

Oh, there were a few people about, but the market square was largely closed and deserved, as were the businesses on the trade streets. Everywhere, the doors of houses bore signs that read 'sickness' in hasty black letters; even the few that did not were shut tight. There was a strange, funereal silence, as though even the healthy dared not raise their voices.

The lone, wan guard at the gate had waved them through, casting a grateful, greedy eye at their carts of supplies, and directed them to the town hall.

It was a large building, built of stone both old and new, the contrast between the ancient bricks and those used in its repair obvious. Even from the outside she could smell the odd, sour scent of sickness, jarring against the bright spring morning.

This was the first time in her life she had been around true sickness – and being near it in a place that still brought her pain didn't help. She had no wish at all to be here, but she was Captain, and captains looked out for those under their command.

Menelwen met them at the door, and Tauriel couldn't tell if her pallor was form illness or simple exhaustion. Her uniform was rumpled, and looked as though it had been slept in, her auburn hair mussed.

She also looked strangely unnerved to see them, so much so that it made Tauriel uneasy. She would have expected abject relief.

"You do not seem pleased to see us," she said, halting the cart.

"Oh, I am," Menelwen said. "It's just – Lorna knew you were coming. She said she could feel you, though she could not hear you, whatever that means."

That was a little unnerving. If Tauriel was a worse person, she would wish this woman dead. She was not a worse person, however, nor were the healers. However strange and dangerous this little Edain might be, they would tend to her like all the others.

The sour, bitter odor of sickness assailed her even before she entered the hall, so strong it felt like a solid force. The coughing echoed off the high rafters – some dry and hoarse, others deep and wet. The shutters were closed, the lights now, and she wondered how anyone was to recover.

All who followed her wrinkled their noses at the smell, but set to work immediately, fanning out among the rows of beds.

"I've done what I can," Menelwen said, "but it's not enough. The head healer, Astrid, says she has never seen anything like this. More and more come in every day."

Tauriel walked the rows, appalled. Some of the Edain looked halfway to Mandos – sweating, grey-faced, curled up beneath what were probably most of the blankets in Dale. There were scores of them, the hall nearly full.

She thought they had gone to Dale overly prepared. Now she did not know if it would be enough.

Menelwen led her to Lorna, and Tauriel wondered how the woman was still alive. She looked the worst of all of them – all the more so when she coughed, and spit pink phlegm into a soiled handkerchief.

Her glassy eyes found Tauriel, and she gave a somewhat vague smile. "Tauriel," she said. "I wish I had your hair. Always wanted to be a redhead." The sentence was a mangled mix of Sindarin, Westron, and what Tauriel presumed was her own tongue.

Tauriel sat on the edge of the bed, since there was nowhere else to sit. The woman's brow was burning, but she seemed semi-coherent. "Menelwen said you could feel us, but not hear us," she said gently. "What does that mean?"

Lorna struggled to sit up, and failed, collapsing back onto her pillows with a curse. "Menelwen's projecting," she said, the word unfamiliar to Tauriel. "I can't keep her out. Her mind is in mine. You – you're not."

It actually took Tauriel a moment to realize her meaning, and then the blood drained from her face.

Most Eldar achieved some level of mental ability with age, but she'd never heard of any of the Edain managing it. She would dismiss it as delirium, if not for the Sindarin. Was that how she had acquired Westron? It made as much sense as anything else, at this point.

"You must explain this to me, Lorna," she said in careful Sindarin, wondering how much the woman would understand.

It took a moment to get a response. "I do not have the words," Lorna said at last, in a mingling of Sindarin and Westron. "They are your words. You do not know mine. Menelwen, she thinks she's sick. Her mind tells her to cough, because she's afraid."

Tauriel wished that didn't make some kind of horrible sense. She knew precious little of the mental arts, but this seemed plausible – provided Lorna wasn't simply raving with fever. The only thing to suggest she wasn't was her sudden grasp of Sindarin.

Tauriel rose. "Menelwen, you must go," she said. "If what she says is true, you should not be near her. Perhaps distance will cure your…malady." Oh, Eru, let it be that simple. The implications behind Lorna's ability, whatever it truly was, were terrible, but if it was the cause of Menelwen's sickness, perhaps it could be easily cured.

Knowing Tauriel's luck, it probably wasn't, but still. She could hope.

She shooed Menelwen off, and looked down at Lorna. Mandos was reaching for her, and she stubbornly refused to reach back. She was gaunt, half delirious, and clearly miserable, but she hung on. Whatever her reason, it must be compelling. "I will send you a healer, little one. Do not die in my absence."

"I'll try not to." The final word in the sentence was cut off by an exceptionally deep, wet cough, and Tauriel winced.

She moved carefully through the dimness, wondering how the Edain could still shiver when the hall was so very warm. Never before had she truly given thought to just what it must be like, to be susceptible to illness, but she wondered now how the Edain could rise each morning, knowing there were so many things that could so easily kill them.

The first thing she had to do was dispatch a raven to the King, telling him of what exactly they'd found. She sat atop one of the carts to write it, grateful for the fresh air, wonderfully cool after the sweltering humidity of the hall. Outside, it still smelled mostly like springtime, the earth awakening after its long winter slumber, unaware and uncaring of what went on above it.

My lord, she wrote carefully, the parchment spread out on a ledger balanced on her knees, this is not what we thought. It is worse than I feared. If others are willing to come, we could greatly use them. I have some idea what has happened to Menelwen, but it is only a guess, and it will take time before I can be proven right or wrong. I do think it likely that what ails her is not catching.

She thought a while, writing as she went, wishing there was some way to cushion this blow. Not that the King would appreciate it if he did. What he was to do with this information was his own affair, but she would make sure he received it.

Working with these Edain taught Tauriel just how little she truly knew of them. The first time she saw a woman cough up blood, she staggered back in shock, even while she grabbed a cup for the poor woman to spit in.

Sigrid hurried over, took a look at the ruby contents, and sighed with relief. "This?" she said, holding it out to Tauriel. "When it's bright like this, it's not as bad as it looks. She's burst a blood vessel in her throat from coughing is all. It hurts, but it's only dangerous if it doesn't stop." She pulled a green vial out of her soiled apron, and tipped a few drops of it onto the woman's tongue. "Rest now, Dagmar. I'll get you some water."

She hustled Tauriel away, and said quietly, "If they bring up dark blood, then we worry. It means the lungs themselves are bleeding, and that's almost always fatal. Astrid's only known two people who have survived it in her entire life."

Tauriel didn't point out that that was not, in fact, very much time at all. To Sigrid, it doubtless seemed like forever. The girl was scarcely twenty. With luck and skill, perhaps that number would rise.

The boy they moved on to would not likely be one of them. Tall and lanky, not much past childhood, his freckled face was a strange, dusky shade of blue, his breath wet and ragged. Ríniel, one of the Woodland Realm's senior healers, knelt beside his squalid bed, bathing his chest with athelas water and chanting, but there was no improvement.

None.

Never had Tauriel see athelas fail in any but the most severe cases of poison, but Mandos had touched this poor boy's brow, and evidently would not be denied. Ríniel's face was pale an pinched with effort, her dark hair damp with sweat, but his fëa dimmed with each increasingly labored breath.

Tauriel glanced at Sigrid, who didn't look surprised.

"His mother's in here, too," the girl said quietly. "And his father. We won't tell them yet." There was sorrow in her voice, but also resignation. Young as she was, she was somewhat inured to death, in a way none of the Eldar ever truly could be. Between the burning of Esgaroth, the battle, and this pestilence, how many people had she seen die?

Tauriel had seen her comrades slain long before the battle, and mourned every one, but battle was different. This brought creeping horror of a sort she had never before known.

"You're projecting."

She jumped, turning. The sound of all the coughing had masked Lorna's approach, but she stood now at the foot of the bed, wrapped in her blanket.

"You're projecting," the little woman repeated, her voice a hoarse rasp in her abused throat. "All'v you. There's too many now, so many'v you in my head. I've got to go somewhere else, before you start coughing, too."

A good quarter of her words were in her own tongue, but Tauriel was shocked to find she understood their meaning, even though she didn't recognize them.

Lorna smiled a little, but there was no humor in it. "Telepathy goes both ways," she said. "Your mind thinks you're sick because mine's telling you that you are. I don't know what will happen if I die while you're all tie to me, but I don't think any'v us wants to find out."

Tauriel froze, ice cascading through her veins. That was a vast understatement.

"Move me," Lorna said firmly, "and hope like hell it's just a proximity thing. Otherwise I might not be able to help taking you all with me." She coughed again – a deep, harsh, sodden sound, so intense it made Tauriel's chest hurt in sympathy.

"I'll find somewhere," Sigrid said, her hazel eyes wide. "Go lay down, Lorna."

She hurried off, which left Tauriel to get the woman back to her bed. They needed aid that even the eldest of their available healers could not give. She had to write the King again, and pray he could find someone willing to help.

There was simply no way Lorna could be intentionally reading their minds, but if their thoughts were pressing too heavily upon her, she had no way of keeping them out. She needed a shield, but there were few enough in the Woodland Realm capable of building her one.

They would get her moved, and Tauriel would write her letter. She was rather glad she wouldn't be around to see the King's reaction.

Tauriel's first missive had not been encouraging. Her second was terrifying.

Fear was not an alien emotion to Thranduil, for all he would like others to think it was. He feared for his absent son; he feared the shadow that had fled to the east, but never had he thought to fear anything like this.

He set out as soon as he received the letter, packing light, pushing the great elk through the trees and out into the golden sunshine. It seemed wrong, that the weather should smile so when such horror lay ahead of him. The air was cool and fresh, so very alive, but he wondered how much death he was to fin.

He would heal this Edain woman, and hopefully his people along with her, and then he would send her far, far away. Galadriel could deal with her, or Elrond. Oh, he wondered what could have given her such strange powers, but he wasn't curious enough to endanger his people. She might not intend to be a menace, but menace she was.

The world might be safest without her in it, but even Thranduil couldn't go that far. It did not sound as though this woman could help being what she was. If he had to, he would pay Bard to have someone take her to Galadriel.

Within the next two days, ten more people died.

It was, Astrid told Tauriel, still a surprisingly low number, but it made it no less difficult to witness. Watching someone drown in their own blood was very different than watching someone fall in battle.

Tauriel mostly worked alongside Sigrid, doing whatever needed doing. They changed linen, fed those who were able to eat, and arranged doses of the medicine brought by the Elven party. The Edain healers and their aides moved with admirable precision, but morale was low, especially among the Elves. For now Menelwen was not the only one who coughed.

Tauriel had developed one herself, and it was the strangest sensation she had ever known. It was a bit like what happened if one inhaled water – Sigrid had said that that too was technically coughing – but there was nothing actually in her lungs. Her chest constricted, and her breath refused to draw properly. It was wearisome, if not precisely painful, and so alien it made her shudder.

They moved Lorna, installing her in Bard's house with a rotation of healers to keep watch over her, but thus far, distance didn't seem to do anything about this unwelcome connection.

And then the Dwarves came.

They knew nothing of how to heal Edain, but they took over all the business that had faltered in the wake of the pestilence, so that all might not go to ruin before the Edain were well.

Balin, the elderly, white-haired Dwarf who had traveled with the Company, sought her out, and found her brewing a concoction of herbs on a small, portable stove outside the town hall.

"King Dain's sent us with provisions, lass," he said. "I've given them over to Bard. Are you well here?" He didn't mention Kili, but he didn't need to.

"I am," she said, or started to; the 'am' turned into a cough, which turned into a series of hacks that left her doubled over, wheezing.

Balin let out a string of what could only be cursing in Khuzdûl, grabbing her arm to steady her. "Mahal, I'd hoped Ori was wrong," he said, his face pale and stricken.

"The King is coming," she said, when at last she could manage it. Her chest felt like it was burning from the inside. "He knows what he must do, to cure this."

"Never thought I'd be glad to see the forest fairy," Balin muttered, and she choked on a laugh. "Rest, lass. Unless it needs your Elf magic, Dori can take over a while."

"I can't rest just yet," she said. "I must look in on Patient Zero." She'd pulled the term from Lorna's mind – or rather, it had pulled itself. She said that they were projecting, but so was she, and Tauriel could do without some of the memories that came out of her mental ether. What had been done to her mind in her own world was horrifying, beyond monstrous in the eyes of the Eldar – and unfortunately, the one who had done it really did bear a superficial resemblance to the King. It was no wonder she'd been so terrified of him.

Tauriel would have to warn him of it, before he set to work on her, for her memories also revealed a truly spectacular temper that was best not dealt with in real life. In and of herself, she couldn't hurt any of the Eldar, but with that thing she called telekinesis, she wouldn't need to touch anyone to break every bone in their body.

The coughing fit seemingly over for now, Tauriel headed up the cobbled street to Bard's house. Mercifully, he and his daughters had thus far been spared – his son had been apprenticing with the Dwarves when the malady struck, and remained in Erebor. She hoped they would take Tilda as well, though there would be no prying Sigrid from the healing wards.

Having the Dwarves here was a relief for more reasons than one: their presence meant the city was not so unnaturally quiet. No longer did it seem quite so much like a tomb, for it rang with the strident voices of bakers, street cleaners, and whoever else had decided to venture forth from the mountain.

When she reached Bard's house, she found it very warm, yet Lorna was still bundled up on her bed beside the fire. Galasríniel sat with her now, coughing every so often – the golden-haired healer wasn't much older than Tauriel, and seemed to have taken a liking to the tiny Edain, incoherent though she often was.

Currently, she appeared to be unconscious. Her fever had lessened, if not by much, and her periods of lucidity were sporadic, but at least she was no worse.

"Has she woken at all?" Tauriel asked, collapsing onto the spare armchair. It was fat, and surprisingly comfortable for Edain furniture, though the fabric was a scratchy brocade.

"No," Galasríniel sighed. "But she's had nightmares about – well, I'm sure you've seen it, too."

"I have," Tauriel said, shutting her eyes and pinching the bridge of her nose. "And I dread what might happen if that man finds his way here as well."

"If he had, I'm sure we would know by now," Galasríniel said, though she didn't entirely sound as though she believed it. "Is the King sending someone?"

"He's coming himself, or so his raven said. I only hope we are all still alive when he gets here."

The Dale Thranduil found was not as he had ever seen it, before or after the dragon.

Most notably, it was filled with Dwarves, and only a few Edain among them. It made sense, and it was only logical of Dain to send them, but it was still irksome.

They were loud, of course, but there was a strange quality to their noise – one that, in any other race, he would have thought to be slightly desperate. They moved through a city that felt disquietingly like a tomb.

He spotted Faelon, one of Tauriel's lieutenants, crossing the main street with an armload of clean linen. The Elf looked exhausted, but bowed when he spotted Thranduil – and coughed.

Thranduil had seen many, many horrifying things in his life. Dagorlad was perhaps the worst of it, but also there was Doriath, and countless battles and campaigns between the two. He had seen his people slaughtered, had watched is father's head split in two, and yet somehow, watching Faelon cough was the worst of all. It was alien, it was wrong – just what manner of creature was this supposed Edain? What could do this?

He would heal her, yes, and disengage her from the minds of his people, but then he might just kill her after all. The world was already filled with perils; it did not need one such as this.

"My lord," Faelon said, still coughing. "Tauriel said she had written to you."

"Where is she?" he asked, without preamble.

"Bard's house, I think. We put Lorna there, in the hope that distance might make a difference."

"Clearly, that has not worked," Thranduil said, trying to mask his fear with sourness. "Go rest, Faelon. I will deal with this."

"Yes, my lord," Faelon said, though it was obvious he had no intention of doing so. He likely had no time.

Thranduil spurred the elk onward, ignoring the Dwarves that glared as they scattered out of his way. He would need to see Bard at some point, but that could wait until he had finished this task.

He found Bard's house quiet, the man himself absent. Tauriel met him at the door, however, every bit as pale and weary as Faelon. "Thank Eru, my Lord," she said, sagging with relief as she stood aside to let him in. "I trust you have seen some of what we are dealing with."

"Very little," he said, passing through the doorway. It opened into the kitchen, a large room that still managed to feel somewhat cramped, thanks to all the rows of pots, pans, and Eru knew what else hung upon the walls. "How many of you are like this?"

"Too many," she sighed, crossing the floor to the sitting-room. Thranduil had to duck a low-hanging smoked ham to follow her. "By now, I do not know if any are not."

Bard's sitting-room, he found, was large and airy, the pale stone of the walls lit gold by the sunshine streaming through the northern windows. It was also extremely warm, the fire burning high in the grate, and yet the tiny figure on the makeshift bed still shivered.

Looking at the little Edain, Thranduil wondered how she could possibly still be alive. She looked so like a corpse that he would have thought her one if not for the light of her fëa, which was still stubbornly bright. Her eyes were open, but he didn't know how aware she was.

"I should warn you, my lord, your eyes will frighten her," Tauriel said quietly. "I have seen some of her memories, and yours are very like those of the man who did all that was done to her before she arrived in the forest."

Thranduil looked at her, and caught her slight shudder. There was a story there, and he would have it, once this was over. "I will take care," he said, though he didn't really mean it. While he would never intentionally inflict distress on someone who didn't deserve it, this exasperating creature had not earned undue mercy, either. Unless she dropped one of the armchairs on his head, there was little in the room she could hurt him with.

He knelt beside the bed, regarding her. She really did look wretched, and if she was more than peripherally aware of his presence, she didn't show it. However, when he brushed a tangled knot of hair out of her face, her eyes widened, snapping to him, and she recoiled. With rather admirable speed for one so ill, she shot one hand out, grabbed his collar, jerked forward—

And slammed her forehead right into his nose.

Poor Thranduil. Tauriel did warn you. Now, anyone who's read Ettelëa knows that bad things happen when Lorna's telepathy touches Elf minds, but it's not going to manifest itself quite the same way here. In Ettelëa, Thranduil dug through her mind with the express intent of finding something, and that desire only got augmented. Here, nobody actually wanted to get into Lorna's head; they were just freaking out and she couldn't keep them out, so the effect will be different.

I discovered the thing about coughing up bright blood versus dark blood the hard way – when I had pneumonia I coughed so hard I burst a blood vessel in my throat, and it scared the ever-loving shit out of me, my husband, and everyone else in our house. No, I wasn't hacking out streams of it, but there was enough that I just about peed myself. The ER doctor said that's actually more common than most would think.

Title means 'Pestilence' in Irish. As ever, your reviews give me life and hope.