Elrohir Elrondion had wanted to fight a dwarf for over two thousand years, and the smile on his face showed it. When, in an effort to gain their guest's trust, Elrohir had steered the dinner conversation towards his admiration for Dwarven hand-to-hand combat, he had jumped on the opportunity. The company of dwarves had been refugees from their homeland for months. They had come into the valley shepherded by Mithrandir the day before. He could tell that Fundin, the only adult male member of their little company who was not grievously wounded, was feeling a great deal of pressure to protect them. Elrohir had learned, after some delicate questioning, that he and his wife had been separated from their young son as they fled the Mountain. His wife and young daughter were among the injured who had followed Mithrandir, who had promised treatment for the girl's badly burned hands.
The Dwarven warrior shook his beard, and his auburn braids danced. His gold-capped teeth were barred in a ferocious snarl, and, for the first time in many long days, there was a glint of a smile in his dark eyes.
It seemed that the whole of Imladris had decided this would be the evening's entertainment. There was, of course, the notable exception of his father and twin brother, who had been looking after their new patients all day, leaving Elrohir to distract their uninjured guest. So it was that the two circling warriors found themselves ringed by curious elves in the dark of a snowy evening.
"Come at me, you elvish half-breed!" Fundin spun the wooden staff as if it was a battle axe. He chose to fight in full mail, stalking the edge of the sparring grounds like a snow-flecked bear.
"Let's settle this, Naugrim." Elrohir laughed at the taunt, his breath fogging in the chill air. He spun two weighted wooden short staffs, tossed one into the dark sky, and while the dwarf was distracted, he made the first strike. His blow was deftly parried at the last moment as Elrohir caught his opponent around the ankle, and they both went spinning across the sparring ground to the sound of delighted cheers. After that, their sport became an elegant and masterful dance. The elf was fast, but the dwarf was built like a mountain. He had all the rage of a father who had failed to protect his family to back up the swings of his great, steel-lined staff.
They met each other's blows with a rhythm like drumbeats. As the fight increased in intensity, the crowd cheered and chanted. Shouting and clapping at their young lord. The two fighters seemed evenly matched, but Elrohir had the advantage in terms of reach, and he could use both hands with equal skill. The short staves in his hands became twice as effective as he deftly flipped the dwarf onto his back. The crowd clapped and whooped in appreciation, but Fundin would not be cast down so lightly, and he came up with a roar and a whistling sweep for the elf's ankles. Elrohir danced backward with a delighted laugh. The strikes came swifter than thought, and the two warriors moved back and forth across the sparring field in a masterful display of their people's fighting styles until both of them were muddy and scratched.
So it was that when Fundin's staff struck Elrohir's abdomen, it took him by surprise. The elf had effortlessly parried every bow the dwarf had sent his way, but this time he just clutched the staff with white knuckles. Fundin breathed hard, his breath fogging in the cold. He looked up into Elrohir's strange, alien features and recognized the fear in his blinking grey eyes.
"Elf?" Fundin asked, taking a step back.
"Elladan," Elrohir muttered, looking scared and lost. He dropped his staffs, unconcerned that he was being rude to their guest, and pushing his way through the throng of baffled elves, he ran towards the healing wing as fast as he could.
.
Finbaran looked down at the warrior in the bed. His lips were a line of clinical detachment as he observed the heavily drugged and bandaged dwarf.
The burns were horrific, even this many months after the attack. Finbaran and Elrond had spent the long morning cleaning and debriding the wounds. Most of his face was gone, along with his beard. His once bulbous nose had been reduced to a mangled slit down the center of his face. The Dwarf had fought for months in the wild with the aid of his companions. But infection had set in by the time they had reached Imladris, and now he burned with fever and would neither wake nor move. Both Finbaran and his lord had privately agreed that the dwarf was most likely beyond their aid.
Master Tentaluntë picked up the wax tablet that hung at the foot of his bed and read the notes that were written there.
"Kavas," he read the dwarf's appellation, "let's keep you comfortable." He noted that he would have his numbing salve re-applied soon and wondered how long Elrondion would take to make the new batch. Finbaran replaced the tablet on its hook and stepped closer to the dwarf's head with his hands in the pockets of his black robes. He studied the bandaged body for a long moment before passing a gentle touch across his brow and letting him know that it was safe to follow the call of Mandos.
He could not sense the souls of dwarves or men the way that he could sense the souls of elves, which seemed to burn with starlight glory as they wet to their long waiting. But he had learned silversmithing at the feet of Aule, and every bone he ever knit with mithril wires and healing jewels contained a spark of that primordial fire. With a respectful squeeze of the calloused hand, the ancient elf let his lord know that he was sending one of his children home. He made a hallowed gesture of reverence over the still body and pulled the sheets over his face in a great airy mound that settled over the corpse like snow on the mountains.
With a small sigh, Tentaluntë turned and left the room to inform the other dwarves.
He found the three dwarf women sitting on a single bed in the room where he had left them. The mother of the dwarfling, with the bandaged hands, clutched her daughter to her chest. The blonde dwarf woman with the long braids wept as the other two sat beside her. The darker-haired woman, who had lost most of one arm to the dragon fire, put her stump around her companion's shoulder.
Tentaluntë schooled his features as he watched them comfort her. Dwarf women rarely left their underground kingdoms. They considered the world above to be too dangerous.
"Beti?" Master Tentaluntë knelt before the dwarf woman, and his mahogany braids swept the stone floor. He took one of her sturdy hands in his and with the other, made the signs to let her know, gently and in her native speech, that her husband was dead.
Beti shook her head and grabbed the elf's free hand to silence him as if stilling his words would make them untrue.
"I am so sorry." He said and somehow signing the words made them strike as hammer blows on an anvil.
"Take me to him." She asked in the same language. With a nod to the other women, Master Tentaluntë led her out of the room and across the hall to where her husband lay dead. She went to the side of the bed and carefully lifted the fabric from his face, only to reveal the thick bandages that had covered his burns.
Her tears came freely then. She cast herself upon her husband's body and screamed. It was a sound that was the same, no matter your race or tongue. He had heard it enough times to know.
The other dwarf women had come rushing in at the sound of her grief. The one-armed woman with the gold in her dark braids made a one-handed sign that told the elf that he was no longer welcome to witness their funerary rights. He turned and bowed deeply as he stepped back out into the corridor and directly into Elrohir's path. He caught the younger elf by the shoulders and recoiled at the mud that was drying on his clothing and hair. His two elleth assistants had stepped into the hallway from their desk to see what the scream was about.
"WHAT did I say about tracking dirt into the infirmary, Elrondion?!" Tentaluntë snapped. He had switched from the look of a gentle healer to that of a strict and very disappointed disciplinarian in the blink of an eye.
"Where is Elladan?" The healer did not miss the note of raw panic in the peredhil's voice.
"He is working." Tentaluntë folded his arms, scanning his young lord for injuries and finding nothing.
"Where?" Elrohir nearly shouted, grabbing Finbaran's forearms in turn. His hands were shaking.
"He was in the apotheca…" Master Tentaluntë was not permitted to finish because Elrohir had rushed past him down the long, paneled hall to where the apothecaries backed up into the stone wall of the valley.
"Lyra, get Lord Elrond!" he ordered one of the nurses as he rushed to follow Elrohir. The broad central corridor of the healing hall of Imladris was decorated with frescoes of the gardens of Lorien and the pillars were carved to look like mallorn trees. Finbaran watched as Elrohir rounded a corner and leaped down the stairs into the apothecary.
"Elladan?" Elrohir called, breathing heavily and standing at the bottom of the stairs. He turned and looked back at Tentaluntë, who shook his head in bewilderment.
"He was here with me, not twenty minutes hence," Finbaran said with a shrug.
"Elladan!?" Elrohir called. His heart was hammering in his throat as he stepped into the murky shadows between the high shelves. Finbaran stepped to the bottom of the stairs and pressed the switch that activated the crystalline Fëanorian lamps around the chamber.
"ELLADAN!" It was true, Finbaran thought, closing his eyes as Elrohir's cry of grief and fear rent the air. That scream sounded the same for everyone.
"Get a bier!" Tentaluntë ordered the nurse who had followed them in curiosity. "And prepare the surgery!" He did not wait to see her go before he descended the stairs into the cold storage room. Elrohir had found his twin near the back of the room, unconscious in a sea of crimson, sparkling with shards of glass. He read the scene, the shelves above where the peredhil lay had once held glass jars of spirits. They would have shattered all over the floor and diluted his blood, making it spread farther into the cracks of the stone floor. At least it was sterile. "Ai, Estë, ai Návatar," He prayed that this looked worse than it was.
"Dan?" Elrohir was stooping over his brother, fingers probing deep in the flesh under his jaw, one ear to his mouth. The elder twin was pale and still. "I can't feel a pulse," Elrohir called out with a trembling voice, but the master healer was already at his side.
Blood on his lips, thoracic trauma. Tentaluntë placed one long-fingered hand over Elladan's chest, "he lives," was all the old elf said as he hastily tore open the bloodstained garments so that he could access his patent better, "where is he hurt?"
"Elladan?" Elrohir's voice cracked in terror as he pushed back a stray lock of hair from his brother's face, his skin was cool to the touch and his lips were tinged purple.
"He's in shock. Help me turn him." Finbaran ordered, carefully rolling Elladan onto his side while Elrohir supported his brother's lulling head with one gentle hand. He could hear the younger twin chanting a healing prayer. His muddy braids stooped low over his brother's face. Master Tentaluntë scanned his patient's body with a gentle touch. He was known to have an uncanny talent for evaluating trauma.
"He's been stabbed twice in the back," Finbaran observed and, without hesitation, used two of his fingers to probe one of the steadily bleeding lacerations which he found in the younger elf's flank. "There's something broken off in the wound. We must use the utmost caution in moving him up to the surgery." He did not want to worsen Elrohir's panic by letting him know that the six-inch shard of glass was pressed against his twin's aorta. Letting out a long breath, Tentalunte gently tested the position of the shard with his free hand and found that it was firmly fixed between his ribs. There was blood pooling around Elladan's fluttering heart. They had very limited time to save his life. He could feel Elrohir's spirit flowing into his brother's still body with the gentle, ancient healing spell. As tears spilled down his cheeks, his trembling song was one of mending and staying, of breath and hope and deep love.
At that moment, the nurse reappeared, carrying a light canvas stretcher. When she saw Elladan, her mouth fell open in a silent gasp.
"We were just in here not a moment ago!" she exclaimed as she laid the bier down in the space between Elladan and the shelving.
"As was I." Finbaran shook his head, "Raniel!" he snapped to get her attention, "Help me lift him!" Together the two healers moved their patient across to the stretcher, where they placed him on his side. Elrohir tucked his brother's bloody hands close to his chest so they would not hang over the edge and followed the other two, unwilling to break the healing spell. "Two stab wounds, one to the flank, one between the fifth and sixth rib on the left posterior," he reported to his assistant, calmly meeting her horrified gaze. "The weapon broke off in the wound."
"Hold this," Finbaran ordered Elrohir, balling up some of the fabric from his brother's ruined robes and pressing the younger twin's hands over the steadily bleeding wound, "Walk with us. Keep your energy focused here."
"Who did this?" asked Raniel, turning around back when they reached the stairs, doing her best to keep the stretcher horizontal. Her prudent question was met with the deeply troubled silver gaze of the old healer. He immediately looked back behind him, searching the shadows of the storage room until his gaze landed on the decorative metal grate that led to the caverns. It was open.
Turning the corner into the main corridor, the three of them all looked up to see the great front doors of the infirmary swinging shut behind the silhouetted forms of Elrond and Mithrandir. Somehow Elrond's near-silent gasp of horror filled the hall as effectively as a scream.
"Oh, my dear child." Mithrandir closed his eyes.
"Elladan?" Elrond whispered, grabbing the rough fabric at the Wizard's arm for support. The shock only took a moment to pass before he sprinted towards them, "What happened?" he asked Tentaluntë as he skidded to a stop to hold open one side of the doors to the surgery. There were already three assistants preparing a worktable, and an array of cruel-looking silver tools glinted under the blue refractions of Fëanorian lamps.
"He was attacked in the apothecary," Finbaran reported through ossanwe as he raised his voice to support Elrohir. Two of the assistants efficiently moved the unconscious elf onto the table. Blood pooled in the belly of the bier when he was transferred. Elrohir followed the motion without removing his hands from his brother's side. His eyes were squeezed shut in concentration as he chanted. "He was stabbed with what looks like a shard of glass," Master Tentaluntë continued, "it's still in there. Two wounds, one to the flank, might have hit a renal blood vessel, one between the fifth and sixth rib on the left side." Finbaran took a deep breath, "he's lost a lot of blood, my Lord."
"How long ago?" Elrond asked. He stepped behind Elrohir with a comforting hand touching his back. He stooped to pull open first one of Elladan's eyes and then the other.
At his father's healing touch, Elladan startled awake, "Ada?" he gasped as he tried to move, only to find himself pinned down to the cool metal by at least three pairs of strong hands. They could not still the wet cough that tore through him even as his father's hand over his eyes forcibly submerged him in painless oblivion once again.
Elrohir's voice shook even as he put more of his will into his chanting.
"Have you found the one who did this?" Elrond helped pull the bloodied tatters of the healing robe away from his son's suddenly naked body.
"The gate to the caves was open," Finbaran told his lord ominously. With practiced choreography, Finbaran replaced the soaked wad of fabric under Elrohir's hands with a thick pad of absorbent linen. Fresh rivers of red decorated his pale skin.
Elrond turned back to where Mithrandir was standing just inside the surgery doors. "Find the one who did this." He ordered the wizard, who promptly bowed and vanished out the door.
"He's losing too much blood." Finbaran's voice called him back to the room. There was a hint of frustration in the old Noldo's tone. He looked his lord in the eye, and they shared some silent disagreement before both of their eyes turned to Elrohir.
"You've tried it before, and you know what happened," Elrond warned him.
"They weren't twins." One dark eyebrow arched upwards.
"What?" Elrohir looked between them, his eyes moist with unshed tears.
"Help me save your brother, peredhil," Finbaran said earnestly.
Elrond sighed, "he wants to try giving Elladan some of your blood."