The fire burned, the wind blew, and Fili sat as stern as any statue that might have lined the King's Great Hall in Erebor. Betta sat just as still and stern, but in the red light of the fire her cheeks were pale and her hands shook. She clasped them together and stared down at her lap, unable to meet his eyes.
"I am sorry," she said, her voice low but firm. "It seems that my father was right and I am Anbeth still with a gift for saying what should not be said." She shook her head sadly.
Kili sighed but he was secretly glad. Her apology would save his brother's pride and perhaps their whole adventure – and he had not expected it from her.
Fili was still grim. "You have said much," he agreed, "and much that a wiser woman would not have said to me." His frown deepened, but he had turned his eyes from her to the fire between them and sat in silent thought for some time before he spoke again. "Yet what you said needed to be said. I only wish that you had not waited so long to say it…"
Betta looked up but he shook his head. "I must speak with my brother alone."
Her hopeful expression turned to one of abject misery, and Kili pitied her. Fili had often stepped away from their camp with his brother so that they might talk privately of dwarf business, especially in the earliest days of their journey, but he had never asked Betta to leave the fire while they remained to speak behind her back.
Betta was miserable, but she did not protest. She turned slowly and stretched out her stiff legs, moving them with her arms when they proved unable to move themselves. Kili saw her grimace at the pain that even this little effort caused her; she rubbed the heel of her hand against the cramping muscles to ease them. Fili watched all this in silence.
"Be patient with me," Betta told him. "I have sat for too long and do not know that I am able to stand just now. I cannot…"
She had got her feet under her, but when she tried to rise, her aching knees gave out and she sank down again with a gasp. Kili realized that all this time she had not been sitting with her legs folded under her as she usually did. Her limbs that had only been sore before were now stiffened beyond enduring, and he recalled the pain of his own bruises, though the impact of the wolf on his back had been but a fraction of the force that she had suffered when she dropped from twenty feet to the hard stone below.
Fili watched her delay and was impatient to speak with his brother. He had not seen Betta fall and seemed, for the moment, to have forgotten all about it. Kili coughed into his hand and caught his brother's eye. He glanced upwards, towards the roof, and Fili looked up. He saw the many cracks in the ice and remembered what Kili had said about Betta's injury and how she had earned it.
"Of course," he said, and his cheeks flushed red with embarrassment. She had been injured saving their lives.
He nodded to his brother and both dwarves rose. Fili walked away from the fire and into the darkness without looking back, but Kili stopped to take a small, burning branch from the fire to use as a torch. The storm clouds overhead had darkened past twilight and the shadows of evening were creeping into the cave. It was only four hours past noon.
Before he left, Kili nodded to Betta and gave her what he hoped was an encouraging smile, then he hurried away. He joined Fili just as his brother had reached the mound of broken stone near to the mouth of the cave. With a cautious glance back toward the fire, Fili took the torch from Kili's hand and examined the surfaces of several of the larger blocks. Even in the uncertain light, they could see that there were indeed marks cut into the stone; and, though time and weather had greatly worn them, no dwarf could deny that the marks were the same shape as those on the stone of Ankor. Both matched the style of the marks on Betta's map. Fili crouched down and ran his fingers over the rough grooves and even guessed that the same tool would have been used in both places. It supported Betta's theory that the people who lived here were the same that had gone south to Ankor.
He stared at the markings for several minutes, then rose and gave the torch back to Kili who had stood with his back to the storm and his eyes on the fire. He was glad to find that Betta had told the truth, but his thoughts were on the little warmth that the distant flames had provided them. The wind that worked its way between cave wall and troll ice was bitterly cold, and the cracked roof overhead creaked and groaned under the weight of falling snow. Even though Kili was reluctant to break his brother's solemn silence, he worried that letting Fili brood overlong on Betta's secrecy would ruin the little good will that her apology had earned.
"It may be only a pearl…" he ventured.
"It is not," Fili said. "It came from a dragon's hoard and a curse is laid upon it. I cannot…" He clenched his fist and turned his face away. "Of all the secrets that our guide has kept, this is the worst, Kili. How can I forgive her for it?"
"She says she did not know."
"But she suspected and said nothing. Is that not worse? Why should she not by now trust us with something so small yet so dangerous as the suspicion of dragons? Have we not proven ourselves? Haven't I…" His words caught in his throat, and he shook his head. He turned his back to the fire in spite of the cold wind that struck his face and left snowflakes clinging to his beard.
"And yet, she is right," he said softly, "and I have been unjust in my anger. She should have trusted us, but she did not lie… No, she did not lie. It was my own failure. I should have pressed for more information. I should have planned out our journey with more care. Instead, I allowed myself to be distracted by a… by…." He passed his hand over his face. "I have failed. Thorin was right, and I am not fit to lead."
"Thorin?" Kili looked up in surprise. He shook his head. "I do not believe our uncle would say such a thing, not of you, Fili. He would not say so of his own kin!"
Fili had been lost in thought, forgetting that his brother listened; he woke to hear Kili's exclamation and was startled. "What, Thorin?" He realized what he had let slip. Kili did not know of the visions that his brother had seen in the mist upon the hillside. "No, not our uncle," he said quickly. "It was… something else." He rubbed his eyes, trying to wipe away the blur that seemed determined to obscure his vision. He was lightheaded and tired, and reached behind him to feel for the edge of a stone. Finding one, he sat down heavily and dropped his head into his hands.
Kili looked on with concern. "This has all been too much for you, Fili," he said. "Brother, you are not well."
"Too much for me!" Fili laughed. "Perhaps it has been, but you, Kili, are as cheerful and resilient as ever. You were wounded in body while I have only been wounded in heart, yet nothing dampens your spirit. I begin to think that it would have been better if you had been born the eldest. You would make a better showing of it than I have done."
"You do not mean that," Kili said. He put his hand on his brother's shoulder, but Fili shook his head.
"Thorin has always had more smiles for you, little brother."
"Because I am not his heir!" They had had this conversation before. "If I have had more smiles from him, it is only because he expects much less from me and can afford to smile about it. But when you are King, you will do great things, Fili; everyone says so, and Thorin knows it. These doubts are not your own. It is this place that puts darkness into our hearts and draws a shadow over our eyes. It strives to separate us as the mist separated us upon the road, but we must hold together, Fili. All of us." His eyes drifted back toward the warmth of the fire and the lonely woman beside it.
Betta had drawn up her hood and her head was bowed down so that Kili could not see her face, but he imagined her strained and anxious expression as she awaited the judgment that would come upon her. Did she think that they were speaking only of her tale, weighing its truth? What would she say if she heard the doubts that Fili could admit only to his brother? Kili suspected that it was Betta's disregard for Fili's royal heritage that had brought these fears forward again; she did not understand.
He saw that Fili's eyes had also turned back toward the fire, but that he was frowning again. "You were angry with her, but you had reason to be," Kili said gently, "and I think that you will find reason enough to forgive her, if you try. Will you at least give her the chance to explain herself?"
"I do not know." Fili sighed and once more rested his head in his hands. "Perhaps you are right and I am not yet returned to myself. These arguments should have waited for morning. My head aches and my heart…" He sighed again and looked down at his first, clenched tight around the pearl.
"You took a hard blow," Kili said. "You need sleep and to rest. Tomorrow will find you whole once again. Tomorrow we plan our next course."
"What is there to plan? What course do we have? Both map and guide have failed to lead us to any treasure at the end of our quest, and now we are trapped by snow. We could not risk the journey on foot through a storm, even if we had not been cut off from the only road that might lead us out of these hills. And with no road, it would be a fool's errand to wander blindly about; at best, we would be caught and killed by the cold; at worst..." He looked up at the pillar of ice that had been a troll. What if there were more such creatures about?
"And yet, we cannot remain here, holed up in a troll's stinking hall until winter's end – if winter has an end in these cursed mountains…"
"We will find the road again," Kili said, interrupting his brother with more confidence than he felt, "and it will lead us back to Thorin. We will bring him so many great tales that even without a treasure he must admit that we are worthy of another, more noble adventure!"
"I am not worthy of it," Fili said. "How can I claim to have courage enough to face a live dragon when I cannot even withstand the phantoms of a stone from a dragon's hoard!" He struck his fist against his knee with an angry shout.
Betta heard the sound and looked up, but Kili knew that she would not join them unless they summoned her. His brother had fallen silent again, and sat staring down at the pearl in his hand. The torchlight shone red against the smooth surface, and it reminded Kili of its supposed origins. He wondered whether the thing truly had been formed in the belly of a dragon the way Betta described; it seemed more likely that it was just a stone and his brother had brooded on it overlong, giving it power that it did not deserve.
Fili said nothing more and did not move while Kili stood, shivering, passing the torch back and forth as he blew on his cold hands. He wondered whether he could balance the thing on the rock pile or against the wall long enough to pull on his gloves.
"Fili, it is cold!" Kili complained. "If it is only that stone that bothers you, leave the thing behind and let us return to the fire."
"Leave it behind?" Fili looked up and stared at his brother in amazement as if the idea had never occurred to him before.
"Yes, leave it, or cast it out into the storm. If Betta refused to take it back, then it is no longer hers. It is yours to do with as you please, and if it troubles you so greatly, then I say cast it away." He did not really expect his brother to do any such thing; when Fili did stand up and walk to the mouth of the cave, Kili could only look on in surprise.
The cold wind hit Fili full in the face, but he did not notice. He looked out into the night. There was no moon in the sky and the dim stars could not shine through the thickness of the clouds. The valley was all in darkness, save where the darker shadows of the billowing snow tore grey shadows across the distant hills. Fili imagined throwing the pearl out into that blowing wind and snow, watching it vanish in the darkness and the thought calmed him a little. He could let it go, but Kili was wrong, and the stone was not his to cast away.
He returned to brother with the pearl still in his hand. "I cannot," he said. "It is not mine. It is hers. Betta saw clearer than you or I, and the trouble is not with the stone but with what it has become. She guessed that there was a quarrel between the Lossoth and the people of Ankor, descendants of the original bearer of this. What more evidence do we need that her guesses are true than our own journey here? I have argued with her over possession of the thing, not for the power it holds but for the power that I have given it."
Fili looked at Kili, and his eyes were finally clear. "More than once since Evandim, I thought that I had made up my mind to give this back to her, or to slip it into her bag if she refused to take it, because I knew that it was hers and not mine to keep. But I could not do it. I could not give it up, because it was hers. I see that now, though I did not understand it before. This was the only thing of hers that I had, that I could hold. Even if she left us, I would still have this; but now, it is the thing that has come between us, and I have nothing."
With that, Fili opened up his clenched fist and looked down at the stone. Slowly, he turned over his hand, and pearl slid slowly across his palm and off of it. It fell to the ground and vanished under the thick layer of snow at their feet leaving only the hint of a shadow showing the crater where it had landed.
"I cannot throw it away, but I cannot keep it with me," Fili murmured to himself. "If she wants it, she may find it here, but I must give it up."
"Fili…" Kili began, but before he could think of any words of comfort, his brother shook his head.
"No matter," he said firmly. "It is done. I will keep my promise this time and see that our guide returns safely to Ered Luin – if it can be managed – and then she and I will part forever. I will not be the first dwarf to make his way in this world alone, and our uncle will love you the more for it, Kili. You must be the one to continue on the line of our family."
Without another word, Fili turned and walked slowly back to the fire. Kili hesitated, torn in his heart. He could not say what he felt in that moment, whether loyalty to his brother or pity for Betta who would certainly suffer if Fili refused to forgive her. He wondered whether it would not have been better if, as she said, they had never set eyes on that box or on her.
Kili sighed. "In one thing, you are wrong, brother," he said once he was sure that Fili was safely out of hearing. "When Thorin finds out, he will kill me."
He shook his head and was about to follow his brother, but then he hesitated and frowned down at the snow. For good or ill, they were on this quest, and the pearl was a part of it. The map, the box and the pearl were all bound up in an ancient tale, and though Fili might decide to go on or turn back at any time, if they lost any one of those three things, their quest would certainly be over.
Knowing in his heart that what he did was right, Kili quickly stooped down and thrust his bare hand into the snow. He fished out the pearl, wrapped it in a handkerchief and hid it deep in the pocket of his coat. Fili was not thinking straight. If you lost a diamond chip in a hill of sand, it did little good to say you knew which hill; the chip itself was as good as gone. If they left the pearl here in a drift of snow that looked like every other drift of snow, they might never find it again.
When he recovered, Kili knew that Fili would be glad for what his brother did now, but until then, the deed must be kept secret – as much as they had grown to hate the word in recent days. And if Betta learned that Kili had it, she would undoubtedly demand he give it back to her. Best to keep quiet and let the storm pass, he decided.
Carrying his own secret, Kili followed his brother back to the fire. Betta sat as they had left her, and if she had looked up when Fili returned, by the time Kili arrived, her face was fallen again. She did not raise her eyes to him.
The storm had grown bitter while they spoke, and the wind blew so hard through the holes in the roof that it reached its fingers even as far back as their small campfire. The flames guttered and gave little warmth in that open space. They had no blankets and no oilcloth shelter to shield them; nearly all their supplies had been lost. Their only chance of protection from the storm was to move their camp into the cavern, but none of the company was eager to explore that dark and ominous place.
Unfortunately, no new updates until next weekend, at least. I'll be far too busy making merry with my fabulous family - and recovering from the hangover afterwards ;) I wish you all happy and safe celebrations; however, whatever and whether you choose to celebrate or not.
Here's hoping that Santa slips a few new reviews into my stocking!
-Paint