That night, their second in the home of the troll, the cave was comfortably warm – if a little smoky. All day, even when the fire had not been burning, the embers had smoldered and the walls and floor had soaked in the heat. It almost felt like home to Fili and Kili who were used to the unfinished caves and tunnels of Ered Luin. Only the main halls had been fully widened and smoothed in the home of Thorin Oakenshield. Even though the refugees of Erebor had managed to save a bit more these days, they still had little time for works of beauty in their own home. The brother's shared room in the Blue Mountains had rough walls similar to the walls of the cave in the north, though it was much larger and held proper beds.
Unfinished or not, the cave was warm and for the first time, Fili and Kili did not regret the loss of their blankets as they sat around the fire eating with little hunger and sharing the mug of warm broth between them. Fili had been careful to ration his own food, but even Kili was not very hungry. The agony of the day had driven away their appetites.
Betta was silent. She accepted the mug when it was passed to her and chewed her meat, not tasting it. Her mind was on her own misery and she barely heard the dwarves as they spoke to each other of the journey to come. She knew that they left many long pauses between their conversations in the hopes that she would join in, but she had nothing to say and when she glanced secretly at Fili she saw his anxious face but remembered the accusations in his eyes.
"With only one pack, the journey will be difficult," Fili said. He let the words hang for a few moments before adding, "We have only one water skin between us, one blanket and no pot for cooking. And we cannot always expect to find water flowing beside our path…" He waited again. The pause was long enough that Betta looked up and saw Kili rolling his eyes at his brother. She smiled at the thought that she was not the only one seeing through Fili's ruse.
"We have no shelter, either," Kili said. "The march will be slow-going and I do not doubt that another storm will gain on us before we can get out of the mountains. It will be all the worse for us once we reach the foothills."
Fili nodded. "If we journey straight south…" he frowned. "We do not know for certain how far east we have traveled or where we will leave the mountains. We may well come out above the Ettenmoors, and what then?"
Kili sighed. "I, for one, do not wish to face another troll," he said. He did not see Betta's start or notice that she had perked up her ears at the mention of trolls. "As to the weather… we might scavenge a few poles. And this screen would give better shelter than none."
"But then we must carry it," Fili said, "and we will already be overburdened with wood and meat and..." He glanced at Betta, only to see if she were listening, and unluckily for him, she was and she saw his look.
"Say what you mean," she said angrily. "You are overburdened with an injured guide."
Fili looked at her in surprise. "Does that mean that you will go south with us?" His voice seemed calm, but she heard the quiver in his words and knew that he would insist that she did.
"I did not think that the choice was mine," she said coldly.
Kili coughed uncomfortably and stood up. "You two have many things to discuss. I will begin the watch for you, brother," he said, turning to go.
"No, stay," Fili said. "These things concern us all."
Kili hesitated and looked to Betta. To his surprise, she nodded. "Stay," she said. "I have no more secrets to hide." She gave Fili a hard look, and he had the decency to look guilty about it.
Kili sighed and sat down.
"Well, what have you to say?" Betta demanded.
"Only this," Fili said. "My brother has recently instructed me on the value of choice, and I know now that it was wrong for me to deny you yours. If it was wrong for you to keep from us your suspicion regarding the pearl, then it was certainly wrong for me
to hide from you the signs that I have found in these caves. You, at least, did not know the harm that you might have caused, while I did know, yet I assured myself that I lied for a good cause. I wished to keep you safe."
She refused to be softened by his words and continued to frown at him. Fili sighed. "I am sorry, Betta," he said. "I apologize to you, and also to my brother. I ordered Kili to keep my lies. It was not his choice, and I only ask that you do not blame him for my mistake. He had wished to tell you."
Betta stared hard at him, but she saw no lie in his eyes. Looking at Kili, she saw sadness and sympathy and knew that what Fili had said was true. "I do not blame Kili," she said finally. "I believe you when you say that he had nothing to do with your lies. It is his choice whether to forgive you or not for what you have done to him, but I will not accept your apology until you tell me all that you have hidden from me. You offer the pearl as evidence of my wrongs against you, but I have told you all that I knew of it. Will you not do the same? What are you hiding from me?"
Fili hesitated and looked anxiously at his brother. Betta had no intention of asking twice. If he could not give her this little thing, then she knew she was alone.
Kili saw his brother's hesitation and frowned. "It is a just request, Fili," he said.
"It is," he admitted. He nodded to Betta. "It is, and I will tell you what I have hidden. Though I fear what you will do with the knowledge."
And so, reluctantly, he began the long description of all the signs that he had read in the cavern. Some of them he had not yet told even to his brother, but he held nothing back now.
First, there were the seven caves cut into the eastern wall of the cavern. In each one, Fili had found a smooth shelf cut from the stone, pockmarked by erosion and time but he recognized the wear of the rock as being similar to the scrapes on the floors of the alcoves in the halls of Ered Luin where small statues of the old dwarf kings stood displayed in honor. Undoubtedly, the caves here in the cavern had been used in a similar way, to display statues or idols of the people who carved out their home here.
Next, Fili described to Betta the stream that he had allowed her to view only at a distance. She felt her anger again as she realized why she had been kept back, that it was not because he had feared for her safety. She clenched her fist as she listened to him describe the straight cut channel and carved border, and especially when he assured her that the carving was neither Elvish nor Dwarvish in design. She might have made up her own mind about that if she had been able to see it. When he told her that the water was warm and had come from a hot spring somewhere under the mountain, she looked up.
"A hot spring?" she asked, skeptically, and looked to Kili to confirm it.
"It would not be unusual, even as far north as we are," Kili said. "It is common knowledge among dwarves, the pressures and pipes that bring heat up from below. You saw the pipes in our forge…"
She nodded. "It is like a fountain, then," she said thoughtfully. "I have heard that in Minas Tirith there are many fountains fed by a spring diverted from Mount Mindolluin. I would not have expected to find anything like that here."
"It is strange indeed," Fili agreed. "But I can see no other explanation for it. It may not be as complicated as the fountains of Gondor. A quick flowing river with a few pipes to draw some of it away might explain a single rushing stream."
Betta frowned at him. "Is that all that you have hidden?"
"No," he said, "but the last is not much."
His last confession was of the little hut down below that Betta had already seen. All that he could tell her was that he guessed it had been built by Men before the troll had moved into the cavern. He did not know whether the marks he had seen on its walls were carvings or not, but he confessed them just the same.
That was all that he had hidden, and even as he described the last, he felt as if a weight were lifted off his shoulders. Fili was, by nature, an honest dwarf, and lying did not come easily to him.
"That is all that I have willfully kept from you," he said, "though I guess that if we had the many days that it would take to make a proper search of the place, then we might find many more marks of the former inhabitants, Men and Trolls, and probably Orcs as well, for we are close to Carn Dum. I did not know of the copy of your tattoo that is carved on the floor of that tunnel you found."
"No," Betta said, "or you would have tried to hide that from me as well." She frowned, remembering that Fili had been reluctant to let her into the tunnel and had withheld his torch from her until she demanded it outright. "Or did you try to hide it?"
"I did not know of it," he insisted. "We came to this cavern by chance and the will of a troll. You said yourself that the map continues east, and I had faith in our guide that she was right. I had no reason to suspect that this troll's dwelling was our goal."
"Why would you lie to me if you thought that these things were not important?"
"I did not think that this place was where your treasure lay hidden, but I knew that if I told you what I had found, that you would take any sign, any slight hint of human habitation as being proof of your ancestors. You are obsessed, Betta. You must see that. You would wish to stay and search these caves, heedless of any danger."
Her anger rose again. "You are right, and I do intend to search here," she said. "You call it chance that brought us here, but I do not. Kili told me once that our finding of the stone at Ankor was not chance but the will of this land to bring me to my ancestral home."
Fili shot his brother a sour look, but Kili shrugged. There was no way for him to know then what his words would mean to her.
"But it does not matter," Betta said, not seeing their shared looks. "Whether we are here by chance or by design, we are here. If I leave this place, I will never find it again, not if I searched these mountains for a thousand years. To go south with you would be to admit defeat and say that my quest has failed."
"If you die in these caves, your quest will have failed," Fili told her, but she shook her head.
"Not if I find my answers first."
"You would die for your answers?" he demanded.
"I would die for my quest! Wouldn't you?"
"For your quest? No, I would not."
"No, but you would for your uncle."
Fili stared at her and could not understand the triumphant expression on her face. Of course he would give his life to protect and defend his uncle, and if that meant following Thorin to Erebor, then Betta knew that he would go. She had insisted that he go east.
"If I may ask a question?" Kili interrupted quietly. Two pairs of angry eyes turned on him, and he shrank a little under the weight of their combined scowls. "I only wish to know what answers you are seeking, Betta," he said meekly. "I have never heard what questions you are asking. Is it only the history of your father's family line that you wish to learn? We have found that out already. What more do you think is needed?"
She opened her mouth to answer him, then stopped and frowned and closed it again. "I do not know," she admitted, shaking her head.
Kili glanced at his brother. "Perhaps it is the treasure?" he suggested. "I know that you promised us payment out of that, but I think that at this point neither my brother nor I will write up a bill for this adventure."
She shook her head again. "No, though I will have great need for treasure if I do return to the land of the living. I spent my last ten coins on supplies for this journey."
"You must have had some reason for beginning this quest. Why did you leave Rohan?" Kili asked.
Betta frowned, remembering the morning after her father's burial. She had left her mother in the care of other women and gone to search her father's things. Her scalp was still on fire from the tattoo and her hair hung down around her face as she opened trunk and drawer. His bow and quiver she had already taken from his body when it was returned from the battlefield, and she kept his shaving razor, also. And then she had found the box.
She had tried to open it, then and many times after, breaking her fingernails as she tried to break the steal that bound it. Bereg had carried the thing for decades without opening it, but Betta was uneasy in her mind and had sworn that she would find out what was inside.
"I left Rohan to open the box," she said. "There was no other thought in my head. I could not return to Lebennin, and I needed a blacksmith, so I turned my face west toward Dunland. I do not know what I thought would be in it, some answer to why my father had cared more for the box and himself than he did for his own family. Then you opened it, and there was no answer inside, only a map and a pearl, seemingly unconnected to my family." She sighed.
Fili in particular saw the torment on her face and felt a matching agony in his heart. He regretted his anger. He did not regret the things that he had said to her while he was angry, but he knew that his brother was right and he should not have shouted. If he was to one day be king, he had better learn better diplomacy before he, like Thror before him, irreparably damaged the dwarves relations with yet another race.
"You have truly been driven only by that one desire?" he asked.
"I do not know what I would have done if you had not rushed me onto the road again," Betta went on, speaking to Kili. "I may indeed have given up the search. Certainly I would have put it off for some weeks while I refilled my purse."
She frowned at Fili. "But I was rushed off. For these many weeks, I have been pressed by you to interpret this map and lead you to treasure, but my thoughts have been on finding… answers." Her frown deepened with dissatisfaction. "Answers, answers," she muttered. "No, not answers. My thoughts are… I have been…" She shook her head. "Perhaps I have been mad."
"Betta, I did not mean to say…"
"Yes you did. Is this where you draw the line, Fili? You will love a human woman, but not a madwoman?"
Fili would have protested that as well, but he saw a sparkle in her eyes and hoped that, maybe, she was only joking.
Betta took a deep breath. "Here, then, is my answer, Kili: I seek peace, peace of mind and the quieting of my anxious thoughts. What questions would I have answered? I would know why my happy childhood was interrupted by grief, why my father was cruel and how my mother could have loved him instead of his brother who loved her in ways that her husband did not." She clenched her fists, and there was a fierceness in her eyes that they had never seen before. "I would know why my brothers died, why all my family has died while I live on to wander alone and without purpose. Without this quest, I have no purpose and their deaths mean nothing!
"If I had my wish, that is the answer that I would find here, but what have I done? I have dragged you along in my madness. Yes, call it madness!" she insisted when Kili seemed about to argue. "Though it may only be the madness of grief. I am glad to have learned all that I have on this journey, and I think that I begin to understand my father. I know more than he ever did, but it has not given me peace. Only one thing will…"
"Return with us!" Fili cried. She turned her frown on him, but he pressed on. "Come back with us to Ered Luin and rebuild your life there. You were not made to sit beside the fire and be content, but beneath the mountains there are things that you might do. There is work for your hands and new stories for your mind. You need not live always in grief. Come south with us and give up this endless search."
Betta smiled at him, but Fili felt his heart sink. It was a smile that he had seen before, the one that did not reach her eyes. "I this what you would have me do?" she asked him. "You would have me return to your mountain halls and live apart from you in the town below? Am I to give up the quest that I have sacrificed my life to for a few happy months as Prince Fili's kept mistress before he leaves me alone again and goes east on his own journey?"
"You are not…" Fili stared at her. "My uncle would not… I would marry you!"
Kili choked on his drink and had to cough to clear his throat. Betta stared at Fili with wide eyes and her look of surprise might well have been one of fear also for what he had said.
Kili coughed again. "Well, that is... it is more than I can speak of," he said, "how you will live your lives together. How long or how short a time as that may be, I do not know either, but it will be a difficult road. I can say, however, that whatever course that road may take, my brother and I would not abandon you, Betta." He looked at Fili. "There is always Nan…"
Fili stared at his brother and was surprised that he had not thought of it before. A month ago, he would have dismissed the name as beneath him, but now, though he had to admit that it was not respectable, Kili's plan would solve many of their problems.
"Who is Nan?" Betta asked, but Kili shook his head.
"It is too long and sad a tale to tell tonight," he said. "She is a good woman, and if you should decide to return with us, you need not take a room in some filthy inn or worry that you would be left a beggar without a home. Nan and Gilon are good people, and they will not look down on you for loving a thick-headed dwarf."
Fili nodded. "It is something to consider," he said. "But we are here to decide what our course should be tomorrow. Which of us shall go south and which of us – if any – will stay behind? If you would know more before you make your choice, Betta, then I will tell you as much as I can, but my brother is right and the tale is long and sad."
"I have had more than enough of sadness tonight," she said. "If you say that these people are good, then good they are to me. I will trust you not to leave me destitute when you go east, but you mistake my words if you think that being the mistress of any Man or Dwarf is offensive to me. I am no longer troubled by the shame of others."
"Your mind is made up, then? Or, do you wish to think on it tonight?"
"There is little choice left in it for me," she said. "Nor was there much choice when I first turned my eyes to the north and left Rohan behind. I wish to stay here and search through every inch of these caves for clues. I would search until I find my peace or the peace of death finds me." She stared into the fire, her hands clasped in her lap and her face a mask.
Fili felt his hope fade, but it was the answer that he had expected her to give. "And so, it now becomes my choice," he said, "to go away with my brother, or to send him away while I stay here with the woman that I love… perhaps, to die beside her." He looked down at his empty hands and was torn in his heart.
Betta was surprised to hear him even speak of it as a choice whether he would go or stay. She did not doubt his word that he loved her and would bear the shame of loving a human woman, but she had never imagined that he would let such a thing keep him from his family and his uncle's quest. Could it be that she, like her father, loved less the person who loved her?
"Fili, you cannot stay here," Kili said sternly. "What of Thorin? What of Erebor?"
"Give me one more day," Betta said. Fili looked at her. "One day to search the tunnel. I cannot have born this all my life for no reason." She touched the short hair on her right temple. "After one day, if I find no clue that convinces you to go on, then I will go south with you. I will give up my quest."
Even as she spoke, she felt the words sinking into her heart like a knife, but part of her mind insisted that she would find a way to convince him. This was not a failure. She would finish her quest!
Fili glanced at his brother, and Kili shrugged. He honestly did not know which side he would have chosen. He was almost as curious as Betta to see what lay beyond the mark on the tunnel floor, but he understood his brother as well, that they were risking their lives every hour that they delayed.
"You are determined to go on," Fili asked her, "to follow clue after clue like ghost lamps leading you on into darkness?
"I have lost nearly three years to this journey, and many more years before that I lost because of it. If I turn back now, I must admit defeat. I must go… not home, for I have no home, and I do not know whether I would be able to forgive the one who forced me to surrender."
Fili frowned, doubting his own resolve but he had been in the forges while the men of the town had haggled over the price of iron, and he knew a negotiation when he heard one. "I will give you half a day," he said. "We are not packed and prepared for the journey, but you are not yet strong enough to help. My brother and I will do that work while you explore your tunnel. But after the midday meal, we will leave this place. I wish to be out of the valley by nightfall. Will that satisfy you?"
It did not, but Betta nodded anyway. She had bought some time, at least, and did not need to fear that Fili would bodily keep her from the tunnel. Her jaw was set, but Fili saw the doubt and struggle in her eyes. She was not as decided as she wished him to believe.
He reached out and took her hand. "All will be well," he assured her. "Tomorrow we will begin the journey south and in warmer lands, you will see that doubt is a passing thing. We will be happy there, I promise you. Remember how you wished to feel the sun on your bare arms again?"
She smiled a little at that but said nothing.
Kili cleared his throat. "I hate to remind you, brother, but we could not find a way out of the valley," he said. "Before we can go south, we must find passage through the mountains."
"No, but we did not have our guide with us," Fili said cheerfully. "You remember the path that led you to this place, do you not, Betta?"
"I remember from which direction I approached the cliff," she said, "though it was dark and much snow has fallen since then. I am sure that I could find the pass, but whether I am able to lead you back to the road, I do not know. I suppose that it no longer matters. You mean to go south, and that is a path that anyone can follow."
"Indeed," Fili agreed. "I worry less about the direction and more for the obstacles that we might encounter along the way. How will we eat and keep warm?"
"Those struggles are in the future," Kili said, stifling a yawn. "If you mean to set out tomorrow, then we must rise early. We will all need our rest tonight. Do you still wish to take the first watch, brother?"
"I do," Fili said. "It is late, and if you take the second, then we will have little need of a third." He smiled at Betta, but her eyes were on the fire again and she frowned at her own thoughts.
Reluctantly, Fili let go of her hand and stood up. She nodded to him as he left and then lay down on her side with her back to the fire. Fili told himself that he had made the right decision, but he wondered whether it would not have been better to give her the whole day.
Kili handed him their only blanket, and Fili left the comfortable warmth of the cave for the merely tolerable warmth just outside of it. He wrapped the blanket over his knees and looked out into the pitch black of the cavern. His thoughts were busy planning and building and, very soon, his heart gave up its struggle and was glad that he had won the day. Tonight, the sky was dark, but tomorrow the moon would begin to open his bright eye, and when he looked down on the world below he would find them camped far out in the snow, far from this lonely place.