"Do you know that elves used to eat your kind? Master Naugrim?" Finbaran asked as he stepped into the next chamber.
"I don't see what that has to do with anything," Fundin growled. He was suddenly aware that he was unarmed. He looked up to the wizard, who was scowling at the master healer in disapproval.
"They thought that they were beasts." Finbaran continued. With a gesture of his hands, the room was illuminated to reveal a large and well-equipped laboratory. The chamber was lined with tall, glass-fronted cabinets and populated with well-organized tables of strange equipment, looping glass tubing and vessels of strange liquids, jeweler's tools, and artfully crafted body parts.
"Because they could not understand their speech." He explained, navigating the tables with practiced steps, low hanging lights kept his face in the shadows, "and of course, to speak, is to have a soul, or so we have been told." Turning back towards his companions, one of his eyes seemed to sparkle more brightly in the shadows than the other. "The great hunter Oromë." He said with more than a touch of disdain, "began the great forgetting, taught us to eat the flesh of those we did not understand." He turned suddenly to study the wizard, who looked back at him with an unreadable expression. "What God would cast his children so far into the world of suffering, only to enslave us to our imperfect siblings?" he asked but was met with silence. "Meek in wisdom and so mighty in power!" He looked to Erestor next and was pleased to see that the librarian was seething. "The Fëa is not a thing of distant starlight. Our bodies are made of the earth and nature, and so are we." He proclaimed and flinched as if he would be struck down in that instant. "We have been used, exploited, and abandoned when we demanded autonomy. I will follow no omniscient king upon his panoptic anthill." He walked up to a table and picked up a stone, "I will not bow to the brother of Melkor!"
"I will not hear you speak so of the Eldar king." Erestor finally snapped, earning a raised eyebrow from the dwarf.
Finbaran ignored the librarian and went on, "Just ere the fall of Eregion, my brothers and I had almost disproved this fallacy," He held the gem between his fingers, and a refracted purple light shone out of it upon his face. "We learned to coax consciousness from stone and metal. And as you well know, set them into rings with minds and voices of their own." He handed the purple gem to Fundin with a gracious smile. "Consciousness is power," he said as the dwarf took the gem, glancing up at the elf for a nod of permission before he snatched it and held it close to his eye. Finbaran laughed fondly. "Tyelpë's thinking stones gave us the power to unify the minds of a people, but also the mind of the wind, the earth, and fire." He looked at Mithrandir, and his eyes fell to his hand upon his staff with a knowing smirk. "Beautiful, is she not?"
"Aye," the wizard said, studying the master healer with concern.
"And we realized that we had never needed the Valar." Finbaran finished with a sad cock of his head. "Righteousness and malice stand as equal tyrants, brothers at the end of the world. No, I will serve neither Manwë nor Melkor but the living earth and those who walk upon it." He angled his chin towards the wizard in defiance, "If I am to face my punishment for my impertinence, I will go to my damnation as a free elf!"
He turned to the final table in the laboratory.
"This is madness, Ataxo!" Erestor put his fists on his hips as he stopped behind the master healer, "you are dangerously close to necromancy."
"My necromancy just saved lord Elladan's life." He hissed back at the librarian suddenly rounding on him and rising up to his full silhouetted height, "The old songs of power have lost their potency in these forsaken days, and you would see his life cut short because of your fearful dogmatism?"
"Ai Eru," Erestor threw up his hands in frustration and was about to storm off when Mithrandir caught him by the shoulder.
"Show us what you have been keeping so secret, Master Smith." The wizard requested patiently.
Finbaran stood before the last table in the room for a moment, letting his guests gather on either side of him.
This table was different from the others. It was solid and wrought of polished brass. And above it, there stood sentry, a gracefully abstracted statue of Aulë. Finbaran pressed a button concealed below the edge. The gleaming surface split down the center, and the top folded aside. Raising up from the floor, there was a neatly arranged bed as if in a sarcophagus. The figure lying upon the rich silks had the proud features of one of the descendent of Finwë. The body was made more of mithril than flesh, it shone with gleaming gems, and a perfectly formed pair of mechanical silver hands lay in rest upon the abdomen. The places where the torture of the enemy had destroyed the pale flesh were knit together by careful artifice of some of the finest elvish smiths in history. He almost seemed to breathe.
"Telperinquar?" Erestor gasped in horror as he stepped up beside the master healer. Finbaran took one of the mechanical hands tenderly, as if it could feel his touch and looked down upon the features of his friend from before the rising of the sun or moon. "Is he… alive?" the librarian asked, looking at the body in morbid curiosity.
"I cannot say," Tentaluntë confessed, "what is life? We tried to put him back together, those of us who survived." The master healer suddenly looked very old, "perhaps his mind has gone out into his creations. Or perhaps the minds of his creations keep his body preserved. Regardless, I swore that I would stand beside him. I have watched over the keeping of my lord until his spirit is free to seek out his body once again or leave Endor forever."
"There is little left of him to be saved." The librarian sounded disgusted, "Surely his spirit has fled to Mandos. There is nothing noble in this effort, Ataxo."
"Noble?" he rounded on Erestor with a laugh, unshed tears in his ancient eyes, "I would fight Eru himself to keep him from the void."
He returned to the bed and brushed aside a silken strand of raven hair from the proud brow. He laid his closed palm across the eyes in a healing gesture.
"Oh, my boy," Mithrandir said, and Finbaran felt the wizard lay a hand on his shoulder.
It was like a bolt of white-hot fire shot down the length of his arm into the still figure on the bed. Eyes plucked out by filthy orc claws an age before opened with a gasp from the dust-dry parting lips. The eyes had been replaced with jewels of perfect shining cut. They swiveled to look upon Finbaran's face in fear and confusion.
Erestor screamed. The wizard immediately drew back his hand. The figure on the bed went limp once more as the connection to Narya was cut.
The dwarf looked up from the depths of the stone he had been studying at the sound of the elf's cry.
"For now, it is better that he sleeps," Tentaluntë looked at the wizard evenly, "now that you have laid my secrets bare," he pressed the button that lowered the bed into the sarcophagus with a hydraulic hiss, "I think that we should leave him to his rest." He sadly watched the face of his oldest friend disappear beneath the shifting metal. The dwarf stepped up to see just as the lid was closing.
"By Mahal's beard." Was all he said.
"Wait until Lord Elrond hears of this!" the librarian was furious and horrified, "practicing the necromantic arts under his own roof!" He stormed towards the door, and Finbaran made no effort to stop him.
"He's right, you know," Mithrandir said as the three of them watched Erestor reach the end of the laboratory and discover that the door was locked.
With a sigh of exasperation, Finbaran looked down at the dwarf, "that gem will buy you a nice plot of land in the Iron Hills." He smiled sadly, "Perhaps you might take in a wayward elven physician when I am exiled for all this." He spoke lightly, but there was a deep and very old wound in his heart that had been dug at by an untrained surgeon.
"Of course, master elf," the dwarf regarded him with a look of sadness as the master healer picked up a box from one of the worktables and opened the door for the librarian. Erestor stormed away down the corridor without acknowledging the healer.
.
Elrohir let the roar of the waterfall drown out his anxiety. He stood naked under the strongest part of the falls, where it splashed against the suspended metal grate on its way to the caves. His father had said Elladan was through the most dangerous period after his injuries, but that didn't keep him from psychically clinging to his twin in fear. Elrohir hummed the healing chant that he had been singing all night. He thumped the glass bottle against his palm and produced a lumpy blob of hair soap which he used to lather his unbound locks, scrubbing to get the dirt off his scalp.
So Lhossiel found him, with soap suds running down from his eyes to his bare buttocks, under the roaring water. She crept up behind him, blood pouring from the gash Arwen had left on her face, eyes burning with a dark fire. One nimble hand tangled in the hair at the back of his head, smacking his face with all her strength into the stone.
Elrohir stumbled, clutching his nose. His head was ringing from the blow, and he could feel blood running down his throat. He felt an arm go around his neck but was fast enough to get his fingers under it and hold it away from his windpipe. Blind from the soap in his eyes and deaf from the roaring water and using his available weapons, Elrohir bit down as hard as he could on the exposed flesh between his hands until blood flowed. Lhossiel shrieked in pain and a moment later felt herself flipped over on the suddenly swaying platform.
That gave Elrohir enough time to scramble away from the water. His hand went to his nose, and felt that it was broken. He wiped the soap from his eyes and, blinking to see his assailant, watched the wood elf roll to her feet. He saw the flash of the blade come at him, dodging her rapid-fire blows skillfully with open-handed parries. Stepping forward between his assailant's legs, he went to flip her off balance when he felt her reverse the move and suddenly slam him to his back. He caught her wrist as she brought the blade down to his bare chest, where it nicked the skin at his sternum. With a roar and a burst of rage, he threw her aside and scrambled to his feet.
"Did you try to kill my brother?" he spat a gout of blood. His wet hair clung to his arms. His chest heaving as he looked around for a weapon.
"Thought he was your Ada." She taunted, her beaded hair falling over her face. "when I realized my mistake, I went to catch him in his office, but the wizard was there, then he killed my Iston, and I knew that I had to finish the job."
"What did you do?" he yelled over the roar of the waterfall. At the same moment, they both saw that the scalpel that was suspended along one of the pieces of iron that made up the grate. They both lunged for it at once, but Elrohir dodged sideways to grab the glass shampoo bottle, and the motion of the platform caused the blade to slip away down into the caverns. It caught the light from the bathroom as it bounced away into the darkness and the rushing water.
Lhossiel was still reaching for where the knife had just been when Elrohir swung the bottle at the side of her head. She rolled perilously close to the edge of the platform, catching herself at the last moment. Elrohir was slick with soap and blind with rage. He swung the glass bottle at her again, but she dodged and caught him in the gut with her knee.
"My Lord Elrohir," Glorfindel called from the bathroom door. They both looked up in a moment of surprise. Lhossiel took the moment of distraction to slam her elbow into his jaw. Still, Elrohir was quick to recover from her blows, and a few moments of desperate grappling later, the elleth screamed as she suddenly tumbled over the edge of the grate and a moment later was swallowed up in the thundering falls. Elrohir panted and spat blood into the flowing water.
The world tipped, and Elrohir was only dimly aware of the Golden warrior standing him up and wrapping him in a soft towel.
"Where," he panted, "where does that stream let out?"
"The falls below the healing halls, my lord."
Elrohir shook his head. There was no surviving that fall.
"After it makes its way through the caverns, that is." Glorfindel continued, frowning down at Elrohir's battered face.
"She has already used that escape route once." He felt the golden warrior pressing a cloth to his face. For the first time, he noticed that the usually pristine Balrog Slayer was soaking wet.
"Make sure that she does not make it out through the caverns," Glorfindel called to the warriors who had stepped inside the bathing room.
"Glorfindel!" Elrohir suddenly remembered Lhossiel's words, "She said that she attacked Ada!"