The captain watched the boy eat in silence. He took a copper tumbler from his pack and filled the lid with dark coffee and sipped it, hoping that it would clear his head of exhaustion and grief. The pastry was a gift from the Lady Eowyn, a bribe to see their prince returned hale and in better spirits. The queen had ordered him to pursue the boy, and hopefully give him some time to cool off before returning. They were sitting on one of the balconies that ringed the archives which sat at the base of the soaring tower atop the citadel. Bits of sand and gravel crunched under their feet as they sat on a low marble bench. Eldarion unpeeled the leaf wrapping from one of the wafers and unenthusiastically bit one of the corners. It was dry in his mouth, but he forced himself to swallow.
From here one could look down across the fountain courtyard, people had begun to gather on the broad stairs that reached the citadel but the guards would not let them past and stood in lines at the tops of the stairs. His gaze moved down across the rings of the city, and out to the hazy Pellenor, the Anduin sparkled in the morning sunlight and far away, patches of farmland faded into mist at the feet of soft lavender mountains. The sky was clear and high and sea birds danced on the wind that caught their hair.
"Why would anyone want to hurt my father?" Eldarion asked eventually. "Or lord Faramir, or Damrod, or Celiriel, she's just a baby?" He sniffed, thinking of the spot of blood on the living room floor. "We didn't do anything, they just want to destroy things."
Holleg sighed and passed one hand through his dark curls. He was a Swan Knight of Dol Amroth, a war hero and the ranking officer in the city guard and he felt completely over his head. He thought of his mother's sister who had been carried away by Umbarian slavers before the war, her orphaned daughters, Brekke and Anga who he had brought back with him to be raised away from fear in the white city of kings. The same girl who now lay burned and unconscious in the healing halls. He had been guarding the surgery while the public library burned with her inside. What had been the point of targeting the library? Had the Face changer seen the girl go inside with the princess, or was it a more symbolic attack? The structure had been built shortly after the war as part of the King's push for public literacy. A selection of precious, historical volumes from the archives and Imladris had been transcribed and made available for public access and classes for children had been held in the lower levels that were now ash and smoke. It was a symbol of Elessar's benevolence and his priorities as a ruler.
A few grains of sand fell behind them onto the pavers with a hiss.
"Yes," was the only answer he could give his young prince, this boy who was destined to rule the reunited realms one day. Holleg felt woefully underqualified to give him life advice when he was surrounded by centuries old half-elves. "And they want to make something new, perhaps. They do not see what must be destroyed to make way for it as important. We are simply collateral damage to such wicked men."
Eldarion choked and slammed shut his eyes against a wave of tears, "but we don't even know what they want, who are they? Why are they so upset at us? Why do they hate my father?" he tore a leaf from the shortbread and watched the wind carry it away down to where they could see lines of black clad guards patrolling the fountain courtyard.
"I don't know," Holleg said, feeling useless to provide the boy with answers. "My lord, but I do know that we must remain together in such times."
Eldarion cringed, the memory of the look of hurt and betrayal in his mother's face washed over him, threatening to drown him in guilt. He clutched the broken handle under his tunic. A few pieces of sand fell on the ground beside them but neither noticed.
"You should not have said that to your mother." the captain said gently, sipping his coffee.
"I know." Eldarion answered in a small voice, "but I don't understand…" his hands clutched the haft under his shirt as if he was afraid that Holleg would throw it over the balcony if he let it go. The nibbled shortbread sat abandoned on the banister, the wind playing with the wrapper. "Why would she not want to use the very thing which saved my father's life? Why do they all want to die? Why do they all want to leave me?" He gasped for a shaky breath and wiped aggressively at the tears that escaped his eyes.
"Oh, sweet boy." Holleg put a hand on the prince's shoulder, Eldarion sniffed hard and straightened his back, rejecting the captain's attempt at comfort. "You did nothing wrong. This is simply part of being mortal."
"I never asked to be mortal!" Eldarion snapped and stood up in anger.
Holleg put up his hands in a gesture of surrender, his face softening in sympathy.
This time the piece of masonry that came crashing onto the balcony was large enough to crack the flagstone right where the prince had sat a moment before. The shock of the sudden interruption Immediately drew the gaze of both to the broken piece of marble between them.
"What was that." Holleg stood, eyes traveling up the sheer face of the tower until his senses warped with vertigo. He was expecting for a terrible moment to see cracks running through the masonry and the whole structure toppling in a blaze of explosive fire, but instead he only received a face full of falling sand.
"I see something up there." Eldarion shielded his eyes, "something's moving!" with that he was off through the double doors to the archive behind them, the curtains billowing in his wake.
"Wait!" Holleg blinked furiously at the grit in his eyes before drawing his sword and taking off after the prince.
.
"Where is lord Elrohir?" Brekke asked the lady Eowyn as she laid fresh bandages across her knees. The girl had an empty mug of analgesic tea in her unburned hand and was fighting off unconsciousness bravely. "I wanted to thank him." She propped her arm on the table which fit across the bed, the skin on the outside plane of her elbow already beginning to blister. It was as clean as could be managed and needed to be bound in order to heal. There was a bright pink cut through her sun-dark skin at her temple and her large brown eyes blinked away sleep.
Eowyn hesitated for a moment before remembering how she herself hated to be coddled, "we have not seen Lord Elrohir since the fire." She said honestly, opening a jar of burn salve. Lord Elladan had ordered her to rest, but she felt personally responsible for the girl. Her sister-in-law was of mixed, Southron heritage, and the handmaiden reminded her sharply of her dark eyed nieces and nephews. She knew that she was kindred to the Captain of the Guard who had suffered greatly in the events of the last day and night. Eowyn would not rest knowing that she might not have been looked after properly.
"Did he not make it out?" the girl shook her head, "how can this be that I am only a little hurt and he has not survived?"
"You were more than lightly injured, sweetheart. Only the herb-lore of Lord Elladan keeps the pain away." Eowyn watched her with concern, she scooped up a fingerful of the yellowish jelly. "this may hurt a bit but it will take away the pain after a moment."
Brekke winced as she watched Eowyn work, dabbing the salve over singed skin, she tried to suppress any expression of pain. "I would like to return to my duties, if I may." She asked after a moment, wondering who had changed the princess' diaper and horrified of the idea that it might have been the queen.
"After you have rested," Eowyn repeated more firmly, "the Queen has ordered me specifically to see that you are looked after!" she turned to pick up a strip of gauze from the bed. "Do not make me disappoint her!"
"I had a strange dream." Brekke admitted, watching Eowyn skillfully bind her arm. "I was in a great hall, like those where the dead are meant to sit in waiting before their souls go into the eternal music. But the wall had been blasted away, and a great wind was blowing and those who were meant to stay escaped, and I was pulled through the wall and out into the night sky." Brekke yawned as the drugs began to tempt her towards the labyrinths of Irmo. "and then I saw myself lying beside the fountain, but the water was red and the music was out of tune," her voice drifted and slurred, she moistened her lips and frowned up at Eowyn with concern, "The stone belongs to the lord of the dead." She muttered as she fell asleep.
The wind blowing through the wide window seemed to turn chill as clouds rolled across the sun out of the east. Eowyn felt a terrible sense of foresight pass across her heart like a rising storm upon the ocean. She hastily put away the tools, bandages and ointments that she had been using and hurried down the hall to where the queen sat vigil by her husband's side. There were grim, black clad guards at every corner of the healing halls. Outside, crowds had begun to gather at the top of the broad stairway that lead onto the fountain plaza. Their unpracticed voices came in through the window in a clumsy rendition of The Seven Stars, an old Gondorian drinking song turned patriotic anthem. The summer's bright flowers were already dying in heaps at the feet of the lines of guards. Eowyn stopped in the hall, blinking away her exhaustion.
Faramir would know what the girl's dream meant, it was surely tied to this mysterious artifact that Prince Eldarion had found. His absence had gone from worrying to alarming but she was almost certain that he was in the hands of this shape-changing villain. That he had not been seen meant that he must have some purpose for him, the exact nature of which she could not imagine. He had called himself 'the one who will save Middle Earth from certain destruction' which meant he was delusional as well as powerful. Faramir had been on a secret mission to the far south for the King, Faramir was known as a dream interpreter, Faramir was missing.
Eowyn stopped outside the king's sickroom, adjusting her clothes and setting her features in preparation. She slipped inside and was surprised to hear Elladan's voice raised in frustration. One of the high windows was cracked open and the curtain billowed inwards interrupting the beam of morning sunlight cast across the tiled floor. An innocuous landscape painting hung on the wall and the king slept.
"You must know more about it!" Elladan was insisting. The dwarf Tulk was trembling in his shadow, shaking his head in denial. Arwen was watching with dark eyes, holding her daughter who watched the adults with fascination, Gimli stood in the corner with his arms folded.
"Perhaps you could ask the one who sold it to me!" Tulk cowered under the gaze of the half-elven queen, "but he dwells far to the West in the Blue Mountains." he looked around for help but his eyes only fell upon Eowyn closing the door behind her.
"Did I not order you to take a rest, my lady?" Elladan rolled his eyes when he saw her.
"I apologize, sir." Her gaze briefly fell on where the king lay unconscious on the bed. His chest rose and fell softly, and his hand twitched on the sable coverlet. "but I may have learned something."
"About this accursed elven gem?" Tulk stuck out his beard.
"Yes, actually…" she held her hands to her chest defensively sensing the tension in the room.
"What have you learned," Arwen silenced the guilt stricken dwarf with a keen glance, adjusting Celiriel and removing a lock of her hair from one insistent fist.
"The handmaiden, Brekke, while she was unconscious. She had some strange ecstatic fit, she saw a vision of Mandos."
"And?" Elladan stood from where he had been leaning against the side table, holding his injured arm under his shirt.
"She said that the stone belongs to the Lord of the Dead." Eowyn's words rang hollow in the quiet. Celiriel made a sound of discomfort.
"Then I suspect it is not you who bears a curse, my good smith," Gimli observed, eyes fixed on his old friend's sleeping face, "it's the stone."
"it opens doors that go both ways." Elladan said thinking himself backwards into memory to where he had heard of such a thing, "the eyes of Mandos." He muttered, remembering something from a scrap of parchment millennia in the past.
"But who would make such a thing?" Eowyn asked, looking around at the room full of people who were almost certainly more knowledgeable than her on the subject, "and to what end?"
"Someone who did not trust the Valar." The Peredhil answered her but leveled his gaze at his sister.
"This is dark magic." Arwen shook her head and looked desperately at Aragorn, willing him to respond to her.
"This is necromancy."
"Maam," one of the guards outside the door poked his head inside, he looked around at all those assembled in the now crowded sickroom and his eyes landed on Arwen. "we have subjects in custody."