"My dear doctor," Erestor stopped beside the rushing subterranean stream as they stepped out of the water-locked gate, "I'm not sure that you appreciate the gravity of the situation!"
"Do my security measures not convince you otherwise, my dear scribe?" Finbaran stood under the yawning arch, a figure of slightly altered darkness between the others and the void. "I have not kept him concealed and safe for thirty yeni of the sun out of mere sentimentality."
"I did not think you capable of such softheartedness," Erestor cocked his head.
"We do not know why his body," he shook his head in emotion, "mutilated and dismembered as it was, did not decay." Finbaran shrugged theatrically, "We do not know what will happen if the rings are destroyed or taken West. What we know," he glanced at the wizard, "is that when they get too close to him… he starts to wake up." The other three exchanged looks of growing unease. "I am the only one left." His voice trembled, and his eyes shown like a lopsided binary star against the subterranean darkness. "Everyone else either left or died, and I know not what to do except to keep him safe from the Dark one with all my skill."
They stood there for a moment in deep silence. It was broken by the sound of rocks sliding over one another and the rush of the water. Their eyes went as one to where the river carved out the bottom of the cavern and saw a very bedraggled-looking wood elf crawling upon the bank, coughing into the pebbled earth.
"Aye, what's this then?" Fundin growled, "Do elf ladies pop out of the rich earth now?"
"Lhossiel?" Gandalf stepped towards her cautiously. She coughed and spat blood into the ground. She looked beaten and miserable.
"Oh! My dear," Erestor swept off his coat and put it around her shoulders, "how came you to be in the water?" He helped steady her on her feet. She glanced around at them, smiling shyly.
"How did you come to be in the water?" Mithrandir asked, stooping to look at her bowed face as she leaned heavily on the librarian.
"I must have fallen from the upstairs bathrooms, my lords." She looked up at Erestor with round eyes. Finbaran stepped up to her and lifted her chin.
"In your clothes, my lady?" he asked, dabbing at the cut on her eyebrow with Erestor's cloak. She winced away from his touch.
"I don't know what came over me," her face collapsed into a mask of grief. "I knew once I jumped that he wouldn't have wanted it." she shook her head, "But oh my lords, I can't go on." She broke down in tears of misery and felt Erestor pull her into an embrace.
"Do not despair." Erestor patted her awkwardly. The sight of her husband's still body hung in his mind's eye as she wept and trembled in his arms. Somewhere far away in the darkness, the sound of running boots was drawing closer. Lhossiel's eyes flickered to the yawning passage behind the surgeon.
"Why did he leave me?" she sobbed as she set her head on Erestor's chest.
At that moment, a few things happened very quickly, all at once. Glorfindel came skidding around the passageway at a run. He seemed to glow in that dark place with an angelic presence. He stopped, registering the sight of his murderous quarry wrapped in the arms of the pretentious but loveable librarian. At the same time, she saw him and turned so that Erestor could not see. Her face morphed into a demonic mask of twisted rage and malice. Before anyone could react, she had plunged the scalpel into Erestor's chest. He squawked in pain and staggered backward in shock. Lhossiel dived under the surgeon's arm as she made for the looming archway.
"NO!" Finbaran screamed, for he knew what was about to happen before anyone else. He lunged forward, grabbing her by the arm and nearly tackling her onto the rocky cave floor. For a desperate moment, he thought that he had her, but he was no fighter, and she easily twisted away from his grasp.
Even as she ran from him and passed under the arch, Finbaran was able to snatch her hand in his own. There was a sudden gust of wind and a violent shifting of the earth as if several tons of solid stone had displaced a large amount of air. Finbaran was left holding a helplessly twitching hand protruding from a featureless cave wall. The tunnel and the archway had vanished as if they were never there.
He did not release it as he fell to his knees and screamed that terrible cry of grief shared by all races at all times. He begged the Valar aloud, weeping and smacking his open hand into the stone, but nothing would open it ever again. Mithrandir came up behind him and knelt upon the ground, placing a hand on his shoulder. He held the elleth's wrist tight until the racing pulse went still under his fingers, and all tension went out from the last bit that anyone would see of Lhossiel, March Warden of Eryn Galen, who was deceived by the whiles of the Enemy, to her utter ruin.
Glorfindel looked in horror at the lone white hand, now gone still, one bloodied palm turned up in the dim elf light of the cavern. The stone had closed upon her body like a living fossil.
"Aye, you don't see many water locks these days," Fundin said to the wizard, and they shared a knowing glance between them. They both knew the secret of a water lock, that once the conditions of its binding spell were breached, the door would vanish forever, for it is said that Lord Ulmo will permit the presence of no evil thing to enter his realm. Meters and meters of unyielding granite now stood between Finbaran and the last resting place of the grandson of Fëanor and the brother of his heart.
"It was she who tried to murder lord Elladan," Glorfindel said at last. He looked down at the surgeon. Finbaran lay against the stone, braids askew and robes soiled with sand. Erestor made a noise of pain as he seemed to come out of shock and, in a daze, looked down at the short blade buried in his pectoral.
"I've been stabbed!" He looked at the doctor, who rolled his eyes and got heavily to his feet. Finbaran stepped in front of the librarian, and a cruel smile crossed his face. With a movement as fast as a hammer blow, the scalpel was yanked free. Erestor gasped in pain.
"That could have hit an artery!" the librarian protested, inspecting the small puncture on his chest that oozed a lazy drip of blood.
"Well, it didn't." Finbaran smiled, looking at the knuckle-length blade. "keep it clean. Lyra can put a patch on it," he turned to Glorfindel, "I suppose the mad old Helmsman is off the hook again?" he gestured with the bloody scalpel, "she would not have triggered the water lock had she been untouched by the malice of the Enemy, the wizard will tell you as much." He went on, regaining some of his dignity and fixing his braids. There was no fighting it now. He had written the inscription above the door himself, perhaps with a troupe of dwarves, the tunnel could be carved again, but for now, the tomb of Celebrimbor, and Lhossiel of Eryn Galen, was sealed.
"And here we have the evidence," Mithrandir produced the weapon used against Elladan from some fold of his garment and, stepping up to the open hand, aligned its edge with the scratch across her palm.
"Why didn't you hear the jars of spirits hitting the floor, master Tentaluntë?" Glorfindel asked.
"That is none of your concern. We have found our assassin. I ask for my privacy." Finbaran snapped, and he made for the passage up towards the apothecaries.
Glorfindel stopped him with a hand on his arm, "You will be having a conversation with Lord Elrond about this." The Balrog slayer informed him evenly.
.
"Muk!" The first thing that Elladan heard as he drifted back to awareness was his brother's cuss of frustration. It was his unconscious chuckle that reminded him of the pain in his ribs and his back, and the throbbing agony in his skull. As he slowly gained awareness of his aching body, he realized that he had never been as thirsty as he was at that moment. His mouth felt cracked, and his tongue was a chewed scrap of leather between his teeth. He drew in a deep breath and was met with a sharp tug against his ribs. Why was his brother practicing his Quenya instead of helping him out of this misery?
Elladan decided to open his eyes and find out. The eyes in question did not respond for a moment, and when they did, they felt crusted and grainy. He blinked. The ceiling was richly carved and ornamented as mallorn branches in full bloom. Had he imagined that dark figures crept between them like spiders? What time was it? It was dark outside. He wondered if he had slept through the whole day. Elladan let his eyes slide down the wall to where he had heard Elrohir's voice. His twin was sitting in a chair beside the fire, crouched forward, busily attempting to fletch arrows. It might have been the heavy doses of drugs that his father had been pouring into him, but Elladan became suddenly melancholic watching his silhouette against the firelight. Elrohir had attempted three times to align the feathers on the arrow in his hands while his brother watched. The fletching of arrows was a common enough fireside activity that both could do it with practiced ease, and yet Elrohir's hands were shaking. He was scared.
"Ro," Elladan said, and his voice came out paper thin. His brother looked up at him with a frown, then, registering what he was seeing, his face bloomed into a smile. He dropped the arrow and moved to the bed in a leap.
"You're awake!" he sobbed, throwing himself upon Elladan's neck and kissing his brother's forehead. He looked his twin in the eye, and Elladan frowned at his brother's two black eyes and swollen face.
"Water!" Elladan croaked, pushing him away weakly. Elrohir jumped up, the shifting weight on the bed caused a spike of pain through Elladan's ribs, and he stifled a gasp.
"Sorry," Elrohir's voice sounded like he had been crying. "I think that the drugs are wearing off." He walked out of his brother's line of sight and returned to his side of the bed with a copper cup.
"Can I help you sit up?" he asked before slipping an arm under his twin's neck and helping his weak hands find the cup and bring it to his mouth.
"What happened to your face?" he asked.
"The same thing that happened to you," Elrohir said, and Elladan looked baffled by this response.
"Where's Ada?" Elladan asked as his twin let him down a bit too roughly. He had piled up the pillows behind his head, and Elladan now lay back, panting. He looked anemic, and his lips were an unnatural ashy color.
"Questioning the witnesses." Elrohir shook his head and sat on the end of the bed. He stroked one of Elladan's feet through the knit blanket. It was the only part of his brother that he felt he could touch without potentially causing him pain. "Some strange magic happened in the caverns," he shook his head, "Did you see you one who did this, brother?"
Elladan shook his head, "grabbed me from behind…" his eyes unfocused, and he was about to drift back to sleep when he suddenly remembered something. He looked around and found his brother's face. Elrohir's eyes were filled with tears. "They thought I was Ada," Elladan told his twin with a frown.
"Then it must have been her." Elrohir wiped his eyes. "he didn't come to greet the guests, so she went to find him in the most logical place." He wanted nothing more than to hold onto his brother in a crushing, full-body tackle but settled for squeezing his toes through the blanket.
Elladan chuckled weakly, "I look nothing like Ada." He mumbled.
"I don't know, brother," Elrohir smirked evilly, "you're starting to get his receding hairline."