"Brekke!" Elrohir yelled through a gust of hot air. He held up one arm as he ducked through the doors to the once impressive library of Minas Anor. Flames were already racing up the high pillars, and a thick layer of smoke covered the ceiling. The central hall, where centuries of Numenorian history were preserved in organized shelves, was already fully engulfed. Elrohir strained his ears over the sound of hungry fire and pressed the wet cloth to his face. The two dwarves entered on either side of him with axes drawn and beards tucked into their tunics.
"Do you hear anything, Master Elf?" Gimli asked, looking up at Elrohir expectantly. He closed his eyes, reaching out for his little niece with his mind. She was weak, too weak to even cry, and close.
"This way!" He dashed in a crouch down a hall to the left where the flames had not yet reached. At the end of the corridor, he turned right and was met with a gust of hot air that stung his eyes. "Brekke!" Elrohir called again, wincing at the heat. A beam had fallen across the only access point to the hallway.
"Help!" The girl's weak voice came from the next room. She was coughing and choking, pinned down by smoke and fire. "Help, please!"
"Stand aside my lady!" a rough voice commanded, and Elrohir startled back as Tulk's great, two-handed axe split the wooden paneling. In a few efficient strokes, the panels fell away and revealed a large enough passage for Elrohir, the slimmest of all three, to shimmy his head and shoulders through.
"Brekke?" Elrohir winced at the smoke that obscured his vision. It lifted for a moment for him to see the girl crouched beneath a writing desk, in a pile of scattered books a few paces away. The little princess was clutched to her chest in her starry blue blanket, her little body limp as a doll.
"Lord Peredhil?" Brekke answered weakly. Elrohir was already clambering through the opening on his hands, hearing the hacking sounds as the dwarves worked to splinter the paneling and enlarge the opening.
"Give her here," he went to his knees beside the girl, eyes watering in the smoke. He held his niece over one shoulder and pulled the girl to her feet with his other hand. Bits of burning paper showered down on their shoulders as the girl staggered against him. It was only a few paces back to the wall where Gimli reached out to take the baby. Tulk was immediately behind him and took the swooning handmaiden from Elrohir's arms, hefting her easily across his shoulders.
Just then, a loud crack came from above them, and the building seemed to shift and groan. Elrohir looked up to see that the roof was fully aflame.
"RUN!" Elrohir commanded the dwarves, who took their burdens and made quickly for the door. As soon as they had passed, one of the walls of the hallway slumped inward with a great spout of sparks. He dashed backward, watching in horror as his route of escape dissolved into a furnace-hot blast of flame. Praying that they had escaped, Elrohir looked around for another exit. He coughed and went to his knees so that he could breathe under the smoke. He could see the remains of a leaded window on the closest wall. Desperate for an escape and feeling the acute suffocating dizziness from lack of air. He crawled towards the window. Molten lead seared his palms as he pulled himself up to the ledge, great gouts of fire belched out of the narrow window, and in the last moment before his mind went dark, Elrohir rolled his body over the edge.
.
A cool breeze brought the Lord of Ithillien back to consciousness. Faramir's eyes fluttered, and the first thing he saw was the gem-bright arc of the Valacirca pointing North East to where the Star of Hope hung brightly above the distant mountains. They seemed to dance and refract like faceted gems before his mind's eye. He felt dazed, and he found it difficult to string his thoughts together. Where was he? He could hear shouts and bells echoing from far away and, above all, sudden, in its strangled grief, the scream of a terrified infant.
"It seems that the dear little princess has been rescued by a dwarf of all things. Fascinating." The voice that spoke had a shifting, melodious tone to it. Faramir tried to pin down where he had heard it before. "but I don't see lord Peredhil. The halfbreed must have been caught in the fire. A bird in hand is worth two in the bush, as they say."
"Celiriel," Faramir muttered, recognizing the child's cries from far away. He shook his head to try and clear his thoughts and blinked pinprick eyes under a furrowed brow. He attempted to move and found that his hands were bound in front of him. His heart rate quickened as scraps of his memory returned.
"Where am I?" he asked, somewhat rhetorically.
"We stand upon the Tower of Ecthelion," came the voice again. "or does the steward of Gondor not recognize the works of his ancestors?"
Faramir looked around him, suddenly aware that his foot was dangling above a precipice and withdrawing it to safety. They were indeed at the very top of the tower, which soared above the citadel. Only a low iron railing separated them from the void. A stiff wind caught the wizard's robe, and a distant firelight illuminated his features from far below. He had swarthy skin, so black as to look almost blue, and a great cloud of a beard and eyes that gleamed like chips of gold. He wore silken robes of midnight and cast a deep hood to shadow his face.
"Who are you?" Faramir demanded, squaring his shoulders despite the discomfort of his bindings.
"A servant of the Valar." He regarded the Lord of Ithillien with even confidence, but Faramir only shook his head. "You may call me Pallando, but I have many names."
"And which Valla do you serve?" Faramir asked. His addled mind was racing. He had been in Harad only a week earlier, where rumors that an ancient power from a thousand years ago had arisen in the mountains. He had come to the south on a secret mission from the King himself to lend aid to those who sought liberation from the ancient houses of Black Numenor, which still ruled over that country.
Pallando smiled, and his teeth were white, "Lord Manwe, of course."
Something in the way he said it reminded him horribly of his father in his last anguished days. The wizard turned, and the wind caught his robes which stood as a void against the clustering stars.
"And what are your orders from the Eldar King?" Faramir asked, bracing himself for the answer against the stone wall behind his back.
"That men should have dominion over Endor." He turned to regard the Steward, "Not these mutant half-breeds which were never in the designs of Illuvatar." Faramir tested his bonds and found that they were very secure. "This day will be long remembered as the day when the men of the West put superstition behind them and entered a new age of reason and democracy. Magic, monarchy, and other primitive superstitions should be left to rot in the past."
"This day," Faramir muttered. He could smell smoke rising on the wind off the city. "What have you done?" He looked up at the wizard in bewilderment.
"I have simply given the people of the Reunited Kingdom, a choice. I was as surprised as anyone when they pulled the Elfstone out of the rubble alive, not to mention the boy. But I will see to it that the king does not wake, the labyrinths of Irmo may wind on forever, and in her grief, the Peredhil queen will fade, and the child in her belly will never take its first breath. But a hero shall arise, Lord Faramir, first High Chancellor of the new Gondorian Republic."
Faramir scanned the sky, trying to judge what time it was. He had been drugged, that much was clear, and somehow transported to this perch high above the city. He gathered that there had been an attack, or several attacks, while he was incapacitated. Aragorn was hurt, perhaps mortally so, and the rest of the Royal family was in danger. The public library had been set ablaze. He found this curious since all that was housed there were copies of the scrolls which his family had long guarded in the city archives.
"I will not help you." He stated firmly. "I would throw myself from this tower before helping you." Pallando took a step closer and Faramir took his chance and lashed out to catch his ankle with a swift kick. But his foot met with thin air as the wizard vanished in a puff of black smoke, only to rematerialize with a cackle on the roof of the tower, where the banner of the white tree snapped in the night wind.
"You cannot touch me." He said in a perfect simulation of Aragorn's voice. "I could be anyone," the voice shifted as he disappeared around one side of the roof, and Eowyn came walking from the other along the ledge where Faramir was sitting. "or anything." Her golden hair played across her face as it caught the wind.
"I refuse to serve you." Faramir scampered back, holding up his bound hands in defense of the thing that had stolen his wife's face.
"Oh my love," the thing that was not Eowyn laughed, "you will not serve me," she opened her hand, and the wind carried a fine, glimmering powder into his nostrils. "You will serve the people of Gondor." Before Faramir had the sense to hold his breath, he found himself swooning and the swirling unreality of drugged vision clouding his senses again. He was falling like Boromir had fallen from the falls of Rauros into the flames of the city far below him. His body lay bound upon the parapet as an unnatural sleep swept his spirit far away into the star-watched night.
.
The great shingled roof of the library collapsed with an enormous plume of sparks that made the city look like a fiery volcano from a distance. Only two silhouettes could be seen climbing the stairs to the Fountain Plaza. Eowyn set Eldarion's now well-wrapped leg down and ran to meet the dwarves.
"Give her to me!" Eldarion reached for his sister from Gimli's arms. Little Celiriel had awoken with desperate coughs and screams of terror as she was carried away. She now cowered in her older brother's arms, sobbing and gasping in fear. Eldarion cradled and soothed his terrified sister, his moist eyes searching for a third rescuer. The flames had spread to more buildings in that ring of the city, and there were bells ringing from the cliffsides calling the people to quench the flames.
He watched as Tulk laid the handmaiden down beside the fountain. He scooped the once pristine water in his scarred hands and used it to cool her dark skin.
"What's Her name?" Eowyn asked, bending over her and listening at her parted lips.
"Brekke." Eldarion said, wrapping his spirit around his sister' small body. He watched the handmaiden in her singed skirts and once soft black curls. She did not respond to the dwarf's voice when he called her name. To Eldarion, it seemed that her spirit glowed within her, fighting like a caged thing against her burned and battered body. Eowyn was calling her name, pushing on her chest, and blowing air into her mouth, but the girl would not wake.
"Where is lord Elrohir?" Eldarion looked up and met Gimli's eyes. They were wet with tears as he gazed into the distant firelight.
"He did not follow." The dwarf's voice was hollow. He staggered on his feet and felt a healer catch him from behind. Eldarion felt Gimli's words like a punch to the gut. What remained of the library was a smoldering ruin by now, a black pillar of smoke, all that remained of it many aged scrolls, none as old or as full of wisdom as the mind of Elrohir Peredhil.
"Then I pray that he found some other means of escape," Eldarion whispered. He did not feel the echo of his uncle's ghost, and he clung to some faint hope that he would not lose anything else this cursed night. Celiriel had gone quiet against his chest. Her clear grey eyes shone into the night. Eldarion looked down to see the purple gem in the broken axe handle pulsating with light. Following the infant's gaze, Eldarion looked and beheld the handmaiden, standing as if arrayed in whisps of cloud like the flowing robes of her people. She smiled at the babe and then met the prince's eyes with a fond smile.
"I never told you." She said into his mind, smiling sadly.
"Told me what?" He turned up his face to look upon Brekke's ghost, and it seemed, for the first time, the image of a simple servant melted away, and he was struck by her beauty even as she faded from time. "no!" Eldarion raised the stone aloft, and a great wave of healing energy went out from him. It struck the girl's body, and all at once, her livid burns turned pink and fresh, and she gasped and choked for air. Healers crowded her at once, and he could hear Lady Eowyn barking orders as they lifted her onto a stretcher. Eowyn pushed back her still-damp hair and took only a moment to frown in concern at the gem in the prince's hand. Celiriel chose that moment to cry and kick her brother's hurt leg.
"Take the child to bed!" Eowyn ordered one of her assistants. The pain brought the prince back into his body with a lurch, and he cringed and lay back as someone took his sister from him.
"Are you sure you do not need sleep, my dear boy?" Gimli was asking.
"Well, now." Tulk was eyeing the broken haft suspiciously, "I didn't know that it could do that, Laddie."
"Eldarion," Gimli came up behind the prince and laid a hand on his shoulder. Eldarion was in shock. He was staring at the place where the girl's body had laid, knuckles white on the broken handle.
"My father was dead." The Prince gasped, wishing that he could swallow the words as they left his mouth. "he was dead, and this thing brought him back." His mouth was dry, and he felt sick and dizzy from blood loss. "I can see… I can see the dead and call them to return…" he muttered, half to himself. "What know you of this gem?" He turned to Tulk, but the smith shook his head in wonder. He took the haft and studied it, turning it so that the faceted jewel caught the light. When it left the prince's hand, it seemed to fade in power.
"I purchased it years ago from a dwarf of the Blue Mountains." Tulk shook his head, "Said it was a genuine Gwaith I Mirdain original, but I thought it was a simple ornament of no great magical power." He reverently returned the gem to the prince, and a light seemed to flare up inside of it.
"Perhaps not in the hands of the children of Mahal," Eldarion whispered. He looked across the bloodied water to where Earendil hung high in the heavens. A wind tugged at his damp hair, and he shivered as if it took with it the light of his Fea. How did it come to him to wield this strange power? How many more could he save? He wanted to rise and go running into the healing halls, but it was as if he were underwater clad in full mail, and he found that his legs would not respond.
.
Aragorn's hands were still rough with callouses from daily sword practice. Arwen made herself focus on the way that they fit into her own so that she would not have to see what her brother was doing. The untidy cuticles on trimmed fingernails, the unconscious reflex that pulled them into his palm and made his fingers twitch from the battered nerves. She lay her spirit upon him like a blanket. Eyes closed tight. She begged the Valar to stay this doom a few more years. In answer, the babe in her womb elbowed her bladder, and Arwen winced.
"Aragorn," she whispered and laced her fingers between his own. She felt as though she was wandering in a great and ancient forest, seeking him, always seeking him. Now and then, she would catch a slight motion, as if her footsteps were haunted by some ghostly ranger who stalked the darkening world like a lingering memory. But his body lay broken, and his spirit wandered as a blind man who becomes lost mere feet from his own doorstep. His eyes would not focus, and his chest heaved in pained gasps.
"Keep him with us," Elladan ordered her gently, glancing up from his grisly work. His fingers were painted red as he carefully removed bits of crumbled masonry from the wound. Arwen did not miss the tension in her brother's voice and felt a rush of rising emotions bring a surge of tears to her eyes.
"He's lucky." Elladan said, trying to sound comforting, "The bone fragments did not pierce deeply. He is strong, Arwen."
The Queen nodded silently, and at that moment came a knock at the door. She turned to see a guard dressed in black and silver step through the doors to the surgery.
"I bear ill news, my lady." He said, glancing first at the king's still body and then at Elladan, "There was a second attack."