.
"Nel, tad, min," Elladan counted as they lifted his foster brother's body onto the surgical worktable. He settled limply against the cool steel like a tree in the fullness of its summer foliage crashing to the Earth. Practiced hands cut away the King's clothes until he was only wearing his undergarments, as his body was turned and the rich sable fabric was pulled from under him. "Get me light!" Elladan barked, and Eowyn stepped around the table, holding a lamp that she hung from above the bed. Elladan turned Aragorn's face into the light, forcing open his eyes one at a time, "Pupils are fixed and unresponsive." He reported with a grim shake of his head. He explored the cut that ran through his patient's hair with gentle fingers. He cringed and shook his head, taking Aragorn's hand.
"Estel, I need you to squeeze my hand if you can hear me!" he called, rubbing the king's bare chest with his knuckles. Aragorn's eyes fluttered, and his mouth moved unintelligibly, but he did not hear his brother's voice.
"How bad is it?" Eowyn heard herself asking.
"There's too much debris in the wound for me to see." She handed him a vessel of clean water and stood on tiptoe to see where the peredhil poured it. She had seen battle injuries before, but somehow this was different. The sight of torn flesh and dust caked in shattered bone and seeping blood turned her stomach as it never had before. Aragorn groaned and pulled away from the pressure of his brother's touch. " And get him something for the pain." Elladan barked at one of the other healers who had crowded close to see over his shoulder.
"Estel?" Elladan held him down, but there was hope in his voice. His brother's dilated grey eyes slid off his face in bewilderment, and he struggled weakly, taking ragged breaths in rising panic and confusion. "He doesn't know where he is." Elladan looked up at Eowyn, who was frowning in deep concern, "Go get my sister." He ordered as another of the healers handed him a copper cup of milky liquid which he coaxed into his brother's mouth.
"Right." Eowyn's gaze lingered upon the king's pale face. Dark bruises were starting to show under his eyes, and streaks of blood cut across his cheeks. She stepped out into the hall in a daze, looking around at the injured for any sign of the queen. She heard her before she saw her.
"I don't care if it was scheduled. Can you not see we are in a state of emergency!" the queen snapped at the sable-tunicked official who clutched a scroll in her shadow. The prince lay on a stretcher, flanked by two dwarves, watching his mother with an expression of awe.
"You have heard her!" Elrohir loomed menacingly at his sister's shoulder.
"It's just…" he objected before the peredhil made a barely detectable move for his sword, and he scampered off.
Arwen wheeled as she heard Eowyn approaching. "Where in this Valar-forsaken realm is your husband!" the queen nearly spat, "he was meant to arrive ere sunset." Her hair was loose, and she had more the look of some vampiric servant of the enemy than their gentle queen.
"Indeed, I saw him not an hour hence your grace," Eowyn bowed, "he said that he was going to the library, which is where I sent your handmaiden. She had the young princess with her."
"She will not find lord Faramir there, my lady," one of the guards interrupted cautiously, "The lord of Ithillien went into the royal apartments and has not emerged." Eowyn frowned up at the fountain guard. His winged helm glinted in the starlight. She shook her head as she remembered her mission.
"Lord Elladan needs you." She informed the queen evenly.
"Thank you," Arwen nodded, she gave a quick glance down to her son, aware that there were dozens of judging eyes upon her. "Stay here," she stooped to squeeze the boy's shoulder and in a swirl of sky-blue silk, she swept into the healing halls.
Eowyn rushed towards the royal apartments. Two nervous-looking guards held their posts dutifully at the front doors.
"Is lord Faramir here?" she looked between them expectantly.
"He entered some time ago, my lady." One of them answered, concern clear in his voice. Eowyn nodded and stepped into the hallway. It was oddly silent.
"Faramir!" she called her husband's name and was answered with silence. She stepped into the hall and cautiously went to the door to her left. The parlor was still, and the light from the window made everything strangely distorted. There were sounds of shouting from outside.
Her foot slid as she stepped into something slick on the wet floor. Eowyn gasped, smelling the distinct scent of blood. She groped in the darkness behind the sofa, feeling a body gone already cold as she rolled the dead man onto his back.
"Faramir?" she gasped. For a moment, her heart stopped in fear. The man had a similar build to her husband, and similar shaggy black hair, but the smell was wrong, and as she dragged him into the pale light from the window, she sighed in mingled relief and sadness. "Damrod." The ranger's throat had been slashed. A sudden surge of fear went through her as she looked around but found no trace of her husband.
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"It's more than that, m lord." Gimli was saying, frowning at his friend across from where the prince lay on his back. His head pounded, and his mouth was dry, and his shocked mind had not yet registered that they were under attack. His eyes lingered on the doors to the palace infirmary where his mother had disappeared. Bright lamplight spilled onto the stone terrace.
"Your father's weapon," Tulk explained, "was originally made by the hand of Telchar of Nogrod, a great smith of the first age."
Eldarion nodded. He was familiar with the story. A slice of pain went through his heart as he remembered his father helping his small hands grasp Anduril's worn hilt when he was too small to even lift the weapon by himself.
"The greatness of the spirit of the smith lives on in the deeds of his creation. Weapons have spirit, will," he shuddered, "and doom."
"Will your people think that your works are cursed?" Eldarion repeated.
"Aye, m' lord." Tulk nodded, "or that I harbor some hatred for the eh, star folk." He glanced apologetically at Gimli, "and my weapons thirst for royal blood."
"But that's ridiculous," Eldarion risked pushing himself onto his elbows and found that his head swam much less than it had before. "Surely anyone could see that you are not responsible!" He looked at his uncle for an explanation, but Elrohir only shrugged.
"It is our belief that a creation contains the soul of its maker." Gimli explained, waxing poetic and folding his great, burly arms. "the rocks, the water, the sky, and the stars are all alive with the souls of the Valar, and we ourselves are alive with the living spirit of Mahal."
Eldarion looked at the broken haft which had been tucked underneath him as he was carried from the site of the attack. The purple jewel on the pommel gleamed and refracted in the dim starlight. It was hypnotically beautiful and strange. As he gazed upon the stone, the world seemed to fall away, and the whole of his awareness sank into the blooming purple depth.
"Tulk?" he asked, a thin ringing began in his ears, "where did you get this stone?"
He heard the dwarf answer, but his voice seemed very far away. The prince's attention was called upwards. A figure of light was running towards him across the courtyard.
"Damrod?" Eldarion asked the figure, he appeared strange and ethereal, and in a moment of certainty, the prince knew that the man who had raised him and taught him how to dress and act like a proper princeling was dead. Eldarion looked down at the stone and knew at that moment that he had found a magical artifact of enormous power.
"Eldarion!" the apparition fell beside him, blood pouring from a slash in his throat. "He took Lord Faramir!"
"Who!" the prince demanded of the spirit.
"The blue wizard!" he shouted in fear before a great wind seemed to come up and blow away the light of his spirit into the evening breeze. His eyes followed the breeze, parting from the light of the stone and suddenly seeing into the living world again. Reality came slamming back to his mind, the throb in his head and the parch in his mouth and the pain in his thigh, and the pillar of smoke rising from further down in the city.
Eldarion did a double take. He was lying facing East, away from the market, so why was there smoke coming from somewhere else?
"The library's on fire." He said dryly, the meaning of the words barely entering his mind, "The library's on fire!" he grabbed Elrohir's leg. His uncle turned, frowning at the smoke for a moment before his mouth fell open.
"Celiriel." He gasped, before turning and sprinting across the courtyard, the two dwarves following at his heels.
.
"My lady!" Faramir's voice came from the shadows as Eowyn stepped into the hallway.
"Oh, thank Varda," Eowyn breathed in relief, seeing her husband alive and well, "Damrod is dead!"
"I know," Faramir looked around cautiously, "and the one who took his life is still here." He took his wife by the arm, "We must get you somewhere safe, my lady."
"Where were you?" Eowyn demanded indignantly, "Did you not see that the city is under attack?"
"My business for the king is my own," he almost snapped, earning raised brows from his wife, "I would get you somewhere safe."
Eowyn stopped in her tracks, looking at her husband with confusion and pulling back her arm. "the king is injured, do you not know?" Eowyn shook her head in bewilderment, she had never seen Faramir fall short on his duties as steward, and she did not understand why he was being evasive and controlling.
"Come, my lady. We must make haste." He reached out his hand and took hers again. She followed him reluctantly out through the doors and onto the open space of the citadel. A strong wind had whipped up with the deepening evening, and it tugged at Eowyn's garments as they crossed the open plaza. There were shouts and raised voices, and she watched Elrohir Peredhil sprint across the Fountain Plaza, stopping only briefly to soak a length of fabric in the fountain and tie it around his face.
"there must have been a second explosive." She deduced as she watched flames leap up from the lower level of the city. The captain of the city guard, a younger man from the South named Holleg, was organizing bucket brigades that used whatever vessels that they could find to move water from the fountain at the heart of the citadel to the flaming rooftop of the library below.
The prince sat alone on a bier beside the fountain, lifting himself up halfway as he watched his uncle sprint into the firelight. One of his trousers had been cut away at the hip, and there were spots of blood seeping through the bandage around his leg.
"Prince Eldarion!" Eowyn called to him, "Where has your mother gone?"
"Uncle Elladan had need of her." The prince looked pale and lost without his family. The fountain guards towered over him protectively with their glinting helms and perfect posture.
"you did not want to rest in the infirmary or your own chambers?" Eowyn asked, her voice softening with affection for the boy.
"I do not think I will find rest this night, my lady," Eldarion watched the distant flames with fear in his pale eyes, "and there are far more grievously injured than I who will need the beds." he straightened his mouth and tried to look as much like his father as he could.
"I am surprised to see you looking so well." Faramir stepped around his wife.
Eldarion looked at him and a shade of distrust fell across the boy's brow. He clutched the broken handle in his hand tightly and couldn't help but recoil at the thing that was wearing the steward's face.
"What are you!" he demanded, trying to keep the tremor out of his voice as he backed towards the edge of the fountain.
"I am the one who will save Middle Earth from certain destruction." The firelight played in his eyes, and Eldarion gasped and pointed as he drew a long knife. The blade was at Eowyn's throat in a flash, but the intruder had underestimated the lady's reflexes and found it blocked and turned aside by the sharp edge of a pair of gardening shears. She caught his wrist in her free hand, planted a donkey kick into what she told herself firmly was NOT her husband's groin, and as he gasped in pain she flipped him over her shoulder to land with a crunch on the edge of the fountain.
Eowyn felt a hand grab her braided hair and a moment later was plunged into sun-warmed water, bubbles trailing from her mouth. The Tree Fountain was much deeper than she had expected and Eowyn, the proud daughter of a landlocked people, did not know how to swim. In her scramble to resurface and catch a lung full of air, she let go of the fist of garments in her hand and felt the intruder wriggle away. As he escaped he landed a kick to her midsection that expelled a gush of bubbles from her mouth. There was a splash and a rush of bubbles to her left as one of the fountain guards followed her into the water, slamming against the intruder. A hand reached out and grabbed the back of her healer's uniform. A moment later Eowyn was gasping for breath, grabbing at the arms which were tight around her waist as she was hauled back out onto dry land.
"My lady!" Eldarion was calling, nervously patting her back as she coughed and choked on the ground. Her wet garments were clinging to her body, and her hair was in disarray. She looked across the fountain to where three of the guards were fighting what had transformed into an oil-black many-limbed thing out of some nightmare of the First Age. The fountain guards held gleaming spears and tried to get between it and the sacred waters as its writhing limbs sought to entangle them and drown them in the fountain that they were sworn to protect. One of the shining spears swept up in an arch, and a spray of black blood fell to steam on the stones. The beast screamed at the touch of Numenorian steel, exposing a swirling maw with layered sphincters filled with sharp teeth. One of the guards thrust his spear into the thing's mouth, and it howled and all at once dissolved into a swirl of angry corvids which scattered in every direction. The birds cried with fell voices as they surged and murmurated around the city, disappearing into the night.
Eowyn blinked at the young prince in shock for a moment. He was touching the bandage on his leg, which, to the healer's concern, was soaking wet and stained in a spreading bloom of crimson. There was a dark puddle forming between his legs. Eldarion was trying to put pressure on the wound but was clearly having difficulty remaining upright as he blinked away the encroaching swoon.
"Lie back," Eowyn commanded him, taking the prince by the shoulder and pressing him back to the ground. She picked up his leg as Elrohir had before, and Eldarion felt his cheeks flush red as the woman who he thought of as an aunt's hands came dangerously close to his groin. "Get me something dry to staunch the bleeding." She said to Holleg as he knelt by the prince's head. A moment later his rich velvet cloak was unclasped and bundled unceremoniously around the prince's thigh.
"Stay still my lord," he kept a hand on Eldarion's shoulder as he strained to see where a great commotion was arising in the direction of the library. The city guard had managed to reroute one of the waterspouts that made its way down through the city and were spraying the roof with an arc of water that turned to billowing steam. From his angle he could only see the very top of the roof as it came crashing down in a great plume of sparks.