The door closed with a metallic click. Elrohir thrashed out with all his strength as two black clad guards seized his arms and directed him through a gaping door into a damp passage. He managed to land an elbow on one of their noses with a satisfying crack. Allatar seemed to shift as the gnarled cane came whipping out of some shadow of his robes, landing a calculated blow under his attacker's jaw which sent his body crumpling into a corner.

"Hold him down!" someone yelled as Elrohir whipped the chains holding his hands together to one side, hooking an ankle with one foot and knocking a second guard onto his backside. There was a sound like the tinkle of fairy bells and for a moment his eyesight went white with a frenzy of iridescent motes. He shoved with his full body weight as another arm tried to wrap around his throat, sending the guard stumbling over a chair that had been hidden in the dark. Elrohir stumbled backwards, noting that the guards had doubled over in wide eyed euphoric laughter.

"Grab their keys!" Allatar ordered, looking around between the four incapacitated warriors. Elrohir stepped over the one who he had elbowed in the face, who now gurgled weakly as he choked around a mouthful of blood. Elrohir unhooked the brass ring from his belt before rolling him onto his side with an apologetic pat on the shoulder, the man moaned but did not attempt to hinder their escape.

The wizard was peering through the small window on the door out to the street.

"Not that way," Elrohir warned, unlocking the band around his wrist and letting the chains fall at his feet, he looked around at the convulsively laughing guards. "What did you do to them?" he asked in wonder.

"Strange fruits grow in the gardens of Lorien." He answered cryptically, the light from the street falling across his hooded eyes. "a sudden vision of absolute truth can be as disorienting as the most believable illusion." He looked back at Elrohir and the light from the window turned his hair into a halo of gold.

"As you say…" Elrohir took the man's sword belt, having lost his at some point between the explosion in the market and here, and buckled it around his hips, "This way," Elrohir gestured for the wizard to come to the door into the dark passage, "we'll never get to the upper levels of the city that way."

"Yes, I think you're quite right," Allatar watched someone moving in the street outside and latched the door before he turned to follow his companion into the underground. Deep below the streets of Minas Anor, a network of tunnels, in various degrees of disrepair followed the streets and stairways of the city up, up, to the tower of Ecthelion and down into dark and ancient places. The rough blocks of heavy Numenorian architecture were not polished down here and as Elrohir followed the passage with one hand on the wall, he tried to recall exactly where they would be let out, he had seen an image of these tunnels at some point during the rebuilding effort after the war, but little of use came to his memory.

A little light filtered down from the street above them and illuminated a low stairway some way ahead in the dark. He could hear distant shouts and running feet.

"There," Elrohir pointed, touching the old man's shoulder to draw his attention, "we just have to keep going up." He drew his sword, though he was loathe to use it, these men were not his enemies, but if the wizard was indeed one of the lost blue Istari of the East – which all evidence suggested he was – he might be Aragorn's only hope of survival and anyone who opposed them was a direct threat to that.

They followed the stairs, turned left to pursue a long, curving passage which lead them to another stair that crossed the path.

Elrohir held up his hand as he heard someone approaching, many people, in fact. "there's a patrol coming," he whispered to the old man at his elbow, gently steering him into the shadow beside the stairway. They watched as a small company of city guards passed by them. The silver and black of their livery glinted in the beams of light sent down from the street level.

"Know you if the king yet lives?" one of the men asked another as they passed.

"I have heard nothing, surely we will know by dawn." Another replied. The sound of their clinking mail and even, marching footfalls faded down the passageway out to where parts of the lower city had dissolved into riots.

"At least we have some small fortune," Elrohir whispered as he peered around the masonry to watch the last light of their torches pass, "less of them in the Citadel. My brother will know me, if we can get to him then we will be out of peril."

"Your brother may be perceptive," the wizard warned as he followed Elrohir closely up the stairway, "but my brother is a master of deception. Subtle in mind and form, and utterly convinced of the righteousness of his cause."

"I have met his like before." Elrohir responded, his sword hovering at a nonthreatening angle into the shadows at his feet. "He probably thinks himself heroic… all radicals do."

"You are not above falling victim to his wiles, my boy!" Allatar scolded. "He can be anyone, even me!"

Elrohir stopped at that and studied the old man for a long moment, "but he's not you."

"How do you know?"

"I sense no great darkness in your fëa." Elrohir answered honestly. "I would not have survived this long if I had not that sense. You mean no ill." He shrugged and the two studied each other for a long moment.

"Right you are," the wizard nodded, "and I hope that I may aid the fallen king." He swept past the Peredhil, climbing the stairs two at a time.

"Where have you been?" Elrohir asked him as he vanished into the dark.

"Hmmm?" came the answer from up ahead. TAP, TAP, TAP, went his cane on the stone.

"Mithrandir said that the blue wizards went into the East and fell victim to dark magic."

"Oh.. well," he seemed to chuckle, "one wizard's 'dark magic' is another's medicine. I do not worship The Enemy."

"I don't understand." Elrohir walked even to him now, up stairs that seemed to go up and up forever into blackness.

"I have spent many long years seeking out all manner of plant and fungus that The Dreamer has planted in Endor to heal the mind and open the senses, and through them I taught and learned great secrets from the Avari of the East. Such a lifestyle ill prepares one for the realities of the battlefield. It was not my fate to charge the gates of the Dark Lord like some foolhardy Noldorin princeling," he scoffed in clear distaste, "my battlefield was the mind, and those who returned inwardly broken from war, I helped restore." Tap tap tap went his cane in the silence. "or should we merely accept that all those firstborn souls who do not have the means to build ships or the desire to leave their indigenous forests should be doomed to eternal thralldom?" he spat his words, the taps of his stick becoming more agitated. "Aman is in the mind!"

Elrohir's steps slowed as he watched the old man move between beams of light which was quickly growing soft in the gloaming of the early dawn.

"Like Melian." He observed softly, but the old man only laughed dismissively.

"One does not find paradise by drawing a circle on the Earth. For even there evil might spring from within, the only girdle to be drawn is round the heart."

"Wait," Elrohir held out one hand, the stair that they had been climbing stopped at a short landing with a wooden door in the center of a high and featureless stone wall.

"Where are we?" Allatar asked, holding up his stick defensively.

"I'm not sure…" Elrohir stalked forward, the atmosphere had gone suddenly chill and the sounds of the city had faded to nothing. He reached out one hand and took the ring at the center of the door and turned, it was icy cold in his hand. The door seemed to open almost willingly, and the darkness that yawned beyond it looked to be a rectangle of deeper blackness in the dark stone wall.

Death lay beyond.

.

The vision that Queen Arwen had seen in the gem hung before her eyes and kept her frozen for a long moment in bewilderment. Her breath came quickly as if she had just run up from the Pelenor. She began to stand when she heard Elladan's cries for help from down the hall. Before she could reorient her unwieldy body to stop him, Eldarion had snatched the broken haft from her grasp and had dashed to the door. She saw Captain Holleg attempt to stop him, look back to his queen and then order the other guards to follow.

Millions upon millions of waiting souls, stacked and filed as neat as a library with texts in every conceivable tongue set in perfect order for the long work of eternity. A forest of death. There was no sleep for these restless waiters, voiceless tongues of the silent multitude, eyes that would turn to neither starlight or hearth, still hearts within cold breasts and ever longer the torment of waiting. Her mind was swallowed in the grim chaos of entropy as all around her seemed to decay in a moment into the long slow surrender to the merciless void, and beyond it all, a music grown more beautiful in the echoes of its ending.

Arwen gasped and a tear escaped her eye to roll along the edge of her jaw.

She was brought back to the world by the sound of her son yelling profanities. Inhaling sharply she opened her eyes to find her knuckles were white as they clutched her husband's still hand. Hearing the commotion outside, she released it, still gentle in her haste, and went to the door.

Eldarion was standing in a beam of morning sunlight. Tulk and Gimli looked on in horror as the lady Eowyn examined her brother's shoulder, which had a thick dwarven bolt driven through it. Elladan was soaking wet and the lady of Ithillien was barefoot.

"It looks to have hit the bone," she was saying. Elladan lay against a pillar on the ground, cradling his injured arm and breathing harshly through his teeth. "its not bleeding too much but I think your shoulder's broken."

"My shoulder is definitely broken." Elladan ground out.

"I did not aim to kill, my lord!" Tulk had dropped his crossbow onto the ground and was kneeling by Elladan's side with his hands raised fearfully.

"You took action decisively!" Elladan took a cup from Eowyn with his free hand and swallowed the contents with a grimace. "Ai, Eru!" he blasphemed and knocked his head on the pillar behind him to relieve some of the tension. "I've been mistaken for worse things."

"Like your brother?" Eowyn muttered shyly and Elladan laughed, the poppy milk mixing with his exhaustion to make him giddy.

"How did you know which one was the imposter?" Eowyn looked up at Eldarion.

"It's the stone. It's cursed." Arwen answered her, stepping out into the hallway, grey eyes flicking from her brother to her son. "Eldarion, put it down!" she begged.

The prince looked down at the stone then back to his mother, "we need it, Nan." Eldarion's face contorted in confusion, "Ada would be dead!?" his voice went up in pitch. "don't you care?"

"I know…" she put up her hands and approached him slowly, "but we can't use it, sweetheart." She shook her head.

"Don't you care?" he repeated, and his voice raised with emotion he looked at his mother with an expression of betrayal and seemed to barely recognize her, "you would let him die?" there was a moment of silence and Arwen closed her eyes, "You don't love him!" Eldarion spat, his words hit Arwen like a battering ram. For the first time in her life she wanted to strike her son and the realization of it froze her in shock. Before she could respond he had already run from the healing halls, out into the courtyard where the morning sun shone off the bloodied water of the fountain of kings.

Arwen fell to her knees, arms around her belly, gentle sobs shaking her shoulders.