Glorfindel looked up from the splinters of greenish glass. Surely this meant that the attacker was the Sylvan named Iston? He looked across to where Master Tentaluntë was carefully inspecting his patient. A flicker of doubt crossed Glorfindel's fëa. The old Noldo hummed along with Elrond's healing chant. Their harmonized voices filled the room with vibrating urgency as they worked. The ancient healer had invented most of the medical devices they used in dire times of need and ingenuity. Glorfindel himself had worn a swirling arch of mithril through his shattered ulna for the past five yeni that was smithed by the old surgeon's hand.
But, he looked at the dark vessel hanging as a grisly pendulum over the Elfling's head. Taking blood from one body and putting it into another was simply not done in traditional Elvish medicine. It went beyond a taboo. This would have been considered wildly unethical in Gondolin. Was Lyra right? Did Tentaluntë look almost happy to be in his element with his young lord unconscious on his table? It seemed too easy. Glorfindel had seen Iston when they were welcomed to the valley just a few hours ago. The elf had moved as one half faded. He was catatonic in his deranged rambling, and he barely had the strength to walk, let alone wield a weapon against an experienced warrior like Elladan Peredhil.
"Yes, lord Glorfindel?" Finbaran asked when he noticed the warrior's eyes on him.
"Will he live?" Glorfindel studied his friend's ancient face. It was, as always, pleasant and oddly emotionless. The thought occurred to him then that if this was some macabre experiment, Elladan's best hope of survival was to let it proceed. Glorfindel felt sickened. His eyes bored into the neat chestnut braids of the ancient elf as he stooped to make another suture.
"I know not," Finbaran answered simply.
The golden warrior nodded. "May Estë guide your hands," he closed his eyes against the wave of emotions that threatened to send him to his knees and stepped back into the hall.
How far would the Old Noldo go for scientific curiosity? Was he such a brilliant surgeon because he was also a monster?
Glorfindel closed the door to the surgery behind him. His eyes swept the assembled crowd, apparently word and spread quickly of Elladan's injury. He shared a grim look with the Wizard and landed on the two Peredhils sitting beside the dwarf warrior and his daughter. "Your brother seems to have been stabbed with," Glorfindel said to Elrohir as he took a deep breath, studying the grisly shards as he stood before the surgery doors. "The broken glass from the upstairs guestroom window."
There was an audible intake of breath as he lowered the silver bowl so everyone could see. The wizard took it from him with a look of pity and disgust and exited quietly.
"Iston?" Arwen gasped, "But why?" She put her hand on Elrohir's back. The confirmation of what they had all expected settled in her stomach. She had welcomed the Greenwood company as guests into their home. If this was true, then it meant that the troubled elf had sought out Elladan less than an hour after their arrival.
"You were the last of the household to see him, my Lady." Glorfindel addressed the Evenstar, whose eyes became round with horror as she traced back through her own memory. "but I will have questions later, for now," the Golden commander continued, addressing his men over the sudden surge of muttering voices, "We need to find and question the Sylvan named Iston, who arrived this afternoon. He may be in the caves; he may be outside., "I want you and ten of your men to join Erestor and Lhossiel searching the forest and Turogar," he addressed one of his captains, "Take everyone else and make a complete sweep of the cave systems and report back here!"
"How is Lord Elladan?" Someone called to him from the back of the crowd.
"You think a wood elf would hide in a strange cave?" another called.
"Who did this?" Five or six other voices echoed these sorts of questions.
"Shh," Glorfindel raised his hands to silence them. He decided then that it was better to silence any false rumors here and now, "Lord Elladan was badly injured. The healers are doing what they can for him. The guard patrols have been doubled for the night, we have no reason to think that anyone is in immediate danger, but until we know more, I will need EVERYONE to RETURN to your QUARTERS!" the last words were spoken as an order.
The armed men swept past him in a swirl of silks and mail. "Hirgil, stay with us." He added at the last moment, and a tall elleth turned back to regard her commander patiently, "Do not let Lord Elrohir or Lady Arwen out of your sight." She nodded and took a sentry post beside the front door.
"My lord elf!" Fundin leaped to his feet. Placing the child on the bench. His hands were on his hips, and he looked almost straight up at Glorfindel, "I would be honored to assist you in this search!"
Glorfindel smiled as politely as he could under the circumstances. "I am sure you will be needed by your own people, master dwarf." He smiled at the child, and she recoiled in apparent fear of the impossibly tall, golden being.
"Nay, master elf!" Fundin insisted, "The child's mother is in yonder hall. You have shown my people kindness unasked for in our hour of need. I would repay my debt. The stones may guide me towards any dark thing hiding in this strange valley." He stuck out his beard.
"Very well," Glorfindel nodded to the captain, who he had named Turogar, "Show him the way."
Turogar inclined his head slightly towards the dwarf and bid him to follow.
"Papa!" the dwarfling squealed, reaching for her father's hand. "I want to go in the cave, papa!"
"Peace, Morlin." Fundin knelt beside the child, "Do you remember how to be brave?" She nodded and made clumsy gestures with her bandaged hands, and her father smiled and kissed her hair. He glanced up at Undomiel sheepishly. "She knows a bit of Westron," He reassured his coerced babysitter, "she's just shy, m'lady."
"I don't mind keeping an eye on her at all." Arwen smiled down at the child, who shrank from her alien presence and stared at her father as he had abandoned her in a dragon's lair.
"Your mama will be finished very soon, my dear. She's right in that door if you need anything," Fundin pointed, then kissed her forehead and, with a final suspicious glance at Arwen, hurried after the elves.
"I said go to bed!" Glorfindel threw up his hands at the crowd of lingering ellith who were trying to peer through the gap in the surgery door, "My ladies." He corrected himself, herding them toward the front doors.
Arwen was painfully aware that Elrohir had not moved or said a word throughout the whole exchange. He was curled over the armrest at the end of the bench, staring blankly ahead at the surgery doors. Glorfindel watched him with knit brows, unsure how to make this better or easier.
"He looks sad." The little girl whispered in heavily accented Westron, peeking around Arwen. This drew Elrohir's attention, and he turned his face to frown at her.
"He's worried about our brother," Arwen told her.
"Oh," she swung her feet, shod in fine leather moccasins. She already had swirls of ginger on her small chin, which made her look even more cherubic. Although worn with travel, her woolen garments had once been richly beaded in the fashion of Erabor. "I'm worried about my brother too. He was with our cousins when…" she fidgeted at her skirts, "when we had to leave home." She whispered the last bit, her eyes traveling from one alien elvish face to the next.
"That must have been scary," Arwen said earnestly.
"We had to hide in the dark for a long time. There were loud noises, and it got really hot, and Papa said not to touch the doors, but I slipped, and I put my hands out, and they got all burned up." She looked sadly at her hands. Elrohir was watching her.
"But you got out." Elrohir reminded her with the ghost of a smile.
"We had to play the quiet game." She turned to eye Glorfindel suspiciously as he stepped forward.
Just then, her mother stuck her bearded head out the door where the dwarves performed their funerary rights. Morlin squealed and hopped down from the bench.
"Mama!" she squealed.
"Come," the dwarf woman looked around suspiciously at the elves, "Where is your father! He has left you to be snatched away by fairies!" she scolded in Kudzul, "Say goodbye to your uncle Kavas."
The door swung shut behind them, and the hallway fell quiet. Too quiet.
They all held their breath for a moment before Elrond's voice rose in a gentle swirl of cascading fire from through the surgery doors. It was a song of resting and binding and quiet fields of lavender poppies under the silver light of Telperion. They all let themselves breathe more easily. This was not a lamentation, not yet.
"My lady," Glorfindel asked delicately, "I have some questions about what you may have witnessed this evening."
"About Iston?" She looked up at the Golden warrior.
"You were the last of our household to see him," Glorfindel said evenly, "Did you notice him behaving strangely?"
"Well… Yes," she looked down in memory, "He seemed terribly wounded in spirit and greatly weakened in body as well."
"And you took the party immediately up to their rooms?" He asked carefully, pacing in front of the bench.
"They seemed in need of rest and refreshment. I thought that with our…" she glanced down at the dwarfling, "other guests, they might prefer to have dinner brought to them."
"And did you notice a broken window?" Glorfindel asked, rounding on her.
"I'm afraid that the curtains were drawn, my Lord Glorfindel. Why do you ask?"
Glorfindel shook his head, "Something isn't right…" he rubbed his palms together.
"I'll tell you what isn't right!" Lyra suddenly appeared from where she had been working at the front desk. She glanced warily at the surgery door and whispered, "Master Tentaluntë was standing right next to the apothecary when Lord Elladan was attacked. He was the only one in or out of there." She balled up her fists, and it seemed that this took quite some courage for her to say as she looked Glorfindel in the eye, "He acted like he didn't hear a thing, my lord!"
"Did YOU hear anything?" Glorfindel scowled down at the elleth. He did not like what the young healer implied, even though he had the same thoughts.
"It is quite far, my lord," she assured Glorfindel, "And I was otherwise occupied with lord Erestor's salve, sir. I was in a side room."
"Salve?" one golden eyebrow shot up in curiosity.
"That's confidential, sir." She informed him with a nod, "But I had written the recipe on a wax tablet, and I left it on the small desk in front of the cold storage. If I had but gone a little bit further." Her voice cracked, and one hand went to her chest.
"I see." He studied the elleth and took a deep breath, "Why would Master Tentaluntë want to hurt Elladan?"
"Because I heard him talking about this very scenario not a fortnight hence." She tightened her lips and glanced at the surgery doors, "he said that he had experimented with Edain soldiers during the war of the Last Alliance. He had given men elf blood, but they always died." Glorfindel felt like he was going to be sick, but she went on, "he told me that he put a dead man's kidney in a wounded man's body. And he lived! For almost ten years! And he told me that he thought he could transfer blood from one twin to…" she froze, looking at the surgery doors behind Glorfindel. Master Tentaluntë was wearing a blood-spattered smock and a pleasant smile as he stood silhouetted by the crystal blue lights from the swinging surgery doors.
They all turned to regard him.
"You will be pleased to hear that lord Elladan is stable and is being moved to a recovery room," Finbaran informed them triumphantly.