Author's Notes: Hello, all! I hope summer's treating you well! A short one this time around, but Elrohir finally gets some answers.
Elrohir opened his eyes to stout oak beams overhead like the underbelly of a ship. Sunlight poured among them, bronzing their edges. By the angle and depth, he must have slept well past the breakfast hour. Why hadn't Elladan woken him?
But the low bed and coarse blankets swaddling him were unfamiliar. The chamber, though softened by rugs, was all stone, and it was silent, without the sound of falling water, the constant music of both his homes.
"Where…?" he muttered to the beams.
"There you are, at last, Laimegil." Rammas was sitting beside his bed, one ankle resting on a bent knee. She wagged a chastening finger at him. Dark circles ringed her eyes. "You gave us all a fright. You mustn't do that again."
She filled a tin of water, and the pouring rush of it made him aware both of his terrible thirst and the foul taste in his mouth. He felt parched as a husk left out in the sun after harvest. With an effort, he fished his left arm out the bedclothes. A tug rippled down to the tips of his fingers, but he felt no pain. Had he been struck with an arrow? Attacked? He shook his head.
"Slowly," she advised, folding his fingers around the cool, wet rim. The thand at her throat caught a glint from the deep-set window.
Lamplight on bloody linen. An arrow shaft tugging from flesh.
Half the water slopped across the counterpane. He would have heaved it off entirely had he been able to manage more then an awkward jerk and if she had not laid a surprisingly firm hand on his uninjured shoulder.
"Slowly."
He searched her face. "Haldir—?"
"You came as close as any I have ever known to unhousing yourself through sheer bloody-mindedness, and your first question is of others." She smiled but did not entirely release him. "We can't lose ones of your mettle."
She would not be so cavalier if the news were grim. He waited.
"I looked in on him before you. He sleeps. An enchanted sleep, I would almost say. Had the Dúnadan not given me strict instruction to keep you as quiet and untroubled as could be managed when you woke—no easy feat, he assured me—I would demand to know how you did it. That was a mortal wound he took."
Elrohir lay back and allowed her to tuck the dry part of the blankets back around him, trying to bring his memory up to scratch. When he cast his thought back, his memory buzzed with a droning wind. "I'm afraid I could tell you little. It's all rather confused and dim…How do the others fare?"
"They will be better for news of you." With a half-glance at the door, she got to her feet. "Calen, in particular. He has been most anxious for you these last few days."
"He acquitted himself very well below—worth a commendation—I shall have to say so to the Captain when he wakes." Days? He frowned. "How long have I lain here?"
"Two days and two nights, with this the morning of the third. And the first of November," answered Aragorn, leaning in the doorframe. "And don't think because you are my elder, you do not have to mind me: rest and light duty only until that shoulder mends."
Elrohir lifted himself against the pillows despite the warning from his shoulder as Aragorn took Rammas' vacated place. He had the gall to smile.
"You're looking much improved."
"If my arm were hale, I'd throttle you," Elrohir replied.
"I am sorry for the uncertainty I must have caused you," Aragorn said, and indeed, his look of contrition had wound their father and many of the household staff around his little finger since he was old enough to stand unsupported. Elrohir knew better.
"'Uncertainty' is not what I would call it. 'Frantic.' 'Frightened half to death,' not uncertain."
"I'm sorry," he said again. "I can only say I had good reason for my actions."
"Glad am I to hear it. What reason was good enough to justify your sending me on a wild hunt fearing all the while Dol Guldur had hold of you? What weighty matter so occupied your mind, you did not think I might be told of it? Might, in point of fact, have been of some help to you? After all the chaos your rashness has caused, you will explain yourself."
He should have gentled his tone.
Aragorn was not a child to be taken to task as if he'd wandered too far afield without permission. Finding him tolerably whole and alive had swung the pendulum of Elrohir's emotions from fear to anger, and soft words faltered when some secret tryst between his brother and his captain had not only imperiled all their lives but excluded him in the bargain.
"You have absented yourself often enough without cause to now demand the same of me." Aragorn tipped his chin up in that irritating way of a man occupying the higher ground. "A great matter has been entrusted to my care. I could not speak of it freely. Even to a brother. I gave my word."
"Haldir extracts many promises from you, it seems."
"Don't speak against him. Not after all this. I will not choose between my sworn brothers," said Aragorn. "Besides, he has asked nothing of me he would not willingly do. You do not know the pains he has taken—not least of all to ensure I'd stay clear of the worst peril. That I chose not to heed him lies not at his feet."
In plain speech: Aragorn had no need of him. Worse still, he did not trust him. Not to accompany him into peril. Not with his secrets. His brother sat within brushing distance of his fingertips, and he might as well have been on the other end of the world. He was suddenly aware that he ached all over.
"Does your wound trouble you?" asked Aragorn, watching his face. "I can fetch you something."
"No."
Aragorn ran his fingers through his hair and chafed the back of his neck. After a moment, he rose and peered out into the hall, one way then the other. He shut the door softly and returned to his seat. "All right, Mind you, I only know little, and the full telling must wait until memories gentle. But I will speak to what I can…
"On Midsummer's Day, we crossed the Anduin at the royal family's behest. Well, not its king. Thranduil is not one to seek help in high matters, especially not from west of the river, but his son shows more sense. Legolas knew Haldir and I had encountered the enemy in many guises in our ranging. He thought our knowledge might prove of use."
"For what?"
"Since Amon Lanc has been inhabited again, the Woodelves have doubled their vigilance and dispatched scouts further south to keep an eye on their neighbors. The king's rangers had found peculiar markings carved into trees and stones. On bodies. The same mark you and I found on Durin's Stone in the dale. It is not the mark of Dol Guldur or any of its lesser vassals."
At Durin's Stone had not been the first time Elrohir had seen that rune, either. "A rival power trying to make itself known?"
"The Silvan folk of the deep woods said it was an ancient and evil sign—not the badge of some would-be upstart who fancied himself a warlord, as we first thought. They would say no more than that. A shadow of fear lay on them; even Haldir and Legolas could not persuade them to part with more," Aragorn said. "Only that it was an orc-sign: ghâsh."
Fire. "Easy to see how the Silvan folk would take any threat of that ill."
Aragorn nodded.
"We were on our way back north when we stumbled, by chance it seemed, on Raguk and his patrol. They were building a crude hythe and a fleet of skiffs on the riverbank, so we stayed our course and laid in ambush about them. Night falls early beneath Mirkwood's eaves, and Legolas deemed it prudent to await the aid of dawn. A longer vigil I have seldom known. Save of late…" His gaze drifted to one side, abstracted by a not-wholly-pleasant memory. "There was one among their number who sat apart. He was… different. One of the goblin folk, little-seen away from the mountains unless they're marching to war. Haldir kept a particularly close watch on him."
"What was his interest?"
"He didn't say. Some old business between them, I gather."
"Well, that's true to form, at least." Elrohir rubbed the corner of the sheet between his thumb and forefinger. "Was this goblin missing fingers on his left hand?"
"How did you know?"
Old business. Down in the lairs Zuraz had implied as much—as had Haldir's seemingly causeless animus. And he had not seen fit to confide, even in his boon companion, its nature.
"I…encountered him…with Raguk after you and I parted in the dale." He did not lie—even if that had not been the end of the encounter. He had no wish to distract Aragorn from, at last, providing answers to his questions. "Raguk was wroth over the Narrows. Your doing, I suppose?"
"We burned the hythe and most of the boats, slew many on the riverbank. But Raguk and his goblin companion escaped across the river. Haldir was deeply troubled, so we hastened back to Lórien, and he dispatched at once with a company to keep an eye on their movements. I heard, at whiles, they had tracked Raguk and what remained of his fellows as far as the Great Gates. Then, for a long while, nothing. That was when I sought the Lady's help and saw that vision."
The grey road. A tickling shiver coursed over the back of Elrohir's neck. "And when Rocheryn went missing, you feared worse had come of your adventure."
"I suppose there's no harm in telling you now: Rocheryn was no mere courier. He was entrusted with far more than requisition lists and soldiers' sweetheart letters."
"He was a spy, you mean." More intrigues.
"One of the Lady's Nightingales, yes," Aragorn corrected gently. "The Lord and Lady have long feared what might happen if the Enemy on the heights of Dol Guldur crossed the river. While we ventured to Mirkwood to keep a watch on the east bank, Rocheryn was here on the other side, working to ensure we made allies under the mountain. I don't know how he managed it, but he had been in contact with one of Balin's people. Last we had heard they had hinted at 'a matter of great import.' An object of interest to the Elves."
"What object?"
"Rocheryn did not know. From what he could glean, it seems trouble has plagued the Dwarves' since their return to Khazad-dûm. Illness. Accidents. A nameless, nagging dread. He was arranging a meeting to try to coax more from his reluctant source when last we saw him."
"A meeting from which he did not return," Elrohir finished. "So, naturally, you cast all caution to the winds seeking the truth and were nearly caught out by Dol Guldur yourself for your pains."
Aragorn shrugged as if the prospect were no more inconvenient than a loose boot sole. "There are places a Man may venture more easily and with less suspicion than an Elf. Besides, I heard tell you arrived in the company of an Orc missing fingers on his left hand. I would like to hear that story at some point."
"Have you found the informer then?" Elrohir asked, skirting the subject of Zuraz.
Aragorn's hands twisted tight together between his knees, and the sigh that escaped him curdled at the ends. "No. Durin's folk are more taciturn than even my rangers when they have a mind, and they put little trust in any outside their own enclave—even now, we are watched more closely than you know. I have had to ingratiate myself slowly with very little success save, perhaps, with Ori. He has a great fondness for Elves since his brief time in Imladris and wished most to hear my tales."
A troubling thought occurred to Elrohir. "Can we trust them? What if this mysterious informer of yours balked? Or, worse, if they gave Rocheryn away?"
"I do not believe that," Aragorn said at once. "These Dwarves are, in most part, of the old line of Durin or near enough. Whatever might be muttered of their wealth, they never treated with the Enemy."
Frár's craggy features flitted through Elrohir's mind. He had been ill-pleased by the presence of Elves in his hall. Had there been more to it than ancient animosity? "Why does it feel we have escaped the frying pan only to fall in the fire?"
"At least we have all fallen together."
Elrohir laughed. Aragorn's nature did not question good fortune. His joy was never lessened for knowing it would end. If anything, he seized on it the harder, which was probably why he had spared Elrohir any curiosity over the 'how' and 'why' of his miraculous healing.
"Truly were you named, Estel. If only you possessed common sense to match your endless good cheer." But the mood for argument had left him. From the bedside table, he plucked up the leather pouch and held it out in offering. "Before I forget. We recovered this in the Second Hall."
Aragorn took it from him and turned it over in his fingers, smiling slightly. "I did not think I would see this again."
"Well, mind it next time. I shan't always be behind to pick up after you."
After a few more desultory remarks and a promise to look in soon, Aragorn bussed his brow and left him to rest. Elrohir settled, not entirely unwillingly, back into the pillows, weary but unquiet. Less an exhaustion of the body than the spirit. A sign of ancient evil in Mirkwood. A murdered spy. An object of great import. Aragorn's words whirled round and round until his head throbbed with the enormity of it all. He had not thought finding Aragorn and safety, at last, beyond hope, would plunge them into greater depths of danger, the more perilous for their unseen assailants and uncertain allies.
He fell asleep without noticing and dreamed—vividly, fitfully—as he had not since a child.
He was home (the fragrance of the pinewoods wafting from the bluffs, the whisper of the Bruinen's tributaries reassuring him he was, in fact, dreaming and not caught still in the Unseen's current). But the great house—ever-bustling with dignitaries, wayfarers, merchants, messengers, and courtiers along with the occasional wizard—was desolate, the Hall of Fire unlit, the feast hall cavernous with dust and shadow. As he ventured the upper floors, the grand staircase closed around him until the walls pressed his shoulders, forcing him onto hands and knees.
He emerged, gasping—not in the bell tower with its pride of Beleriand bronze—but onto a widow's walk of close-fitted slate. Empty. Sea-washed. Drawn by a lulling, rhythmic sound, he walked to the parapet.
Below, wave after grey wave undulated to the ends of the world. The ornamental gardens and training grounds were drowned, foam overflowing the eastern terraces. Even though he remained where he was, Elrohir watched the sea spill across the Hall of Fire, extinguishing the last embers in its hearth; the weight of water burst the mullioned windows of the feast hall, foam hurling itself up the grand staircase and fountaining through the balustrades in a series of little falls.
Someone stood beside him at the wall. He felt their familiarity—the prickling warning of their presence as the first surges lapped against his heels—but he dared not turn his head. If he lifted his eyes from the green glow edging the horizon, even for an instant, he would miss the ship that was passing and would never come again.
