Eldarion cringed. The friction from running up the ever-turning stairs was irritating the stitches in his leg. He could feel the wound, warm and pounding with his pulse, and his head started to spin as he went to his knees on one of the cool stone treads. He had the axe haft through one of his belt loops, bobbing at his hip like a sword. He had to get to the top of the tower. He did not know who or what he had seen up there, but he was certain that it wasn't meant to be.
"My lord!" Holleg insisted, out of breath and clinging to the copper railing that wound around the spiraling stairs, the interior of which had no sort of central beam or pillar but opened without railing or ledge to a dizzying plummet. He wondered if King Elessar had been this foolhardy and independent in his youth. The space had the stale, oily smell of uninhabited limestone, and the only light came from narrow windows designed for siege warfare. They let in none of the noonday sun.
The prince put out a hand to stop the captain. "I hear something…" he whispered, glancing upward, "do you hear it?" far away, there was a soft, rhythmic sound like stone hitting metal.
"It sounds like someone working?" The captain frowned, "please, your highness, let me go first." He laid a hand on Eldarion's shoulder and put his other on his sword hilt. The prince acquiesced, watching the Swan knight stalk silently up the last few twists of the stairwell.
"I hear someone talking," Eldarion whispered up to Holleg, "no, singing! Badly." His face broke into a grin, and he rushed up past the captain. "LORD FARAMIR?" he called up to where the tower ended in a carved dome.
The sound of scraping went instantly silent, and the voice stilled.
"you're not real." The voice behind the door whispered so low that only half-elven ears could hear it. "None of it is real," he said with feigned conviction. Eldarion took the round handle on the sturdy arched door and tried it but found it locked fast.
"The door is locked!" he spoke into the crack of light that led to the terrace around the tower top. He saw the lord of Ithillien sitting on the ground with the sun blazing behind him. "Do you have a key?" Eldarion turned to Holleg expectantly.
"No one comes up here." Holleg admitted, "The only copy is on the ceremonial ring kept by the steward of the city." He gestured significantly past the door.
"Lord Faramir, do you know where the key is?" Eldarion asked, examining the lock thoughtfully.
"You know it best, skin changer." The Lord of Ithillien's voice sounded slurred, almost drunk, and he hesitated over his words as if they were mere inches out of reach of his mind. "you took them, yourself, you old scoundrel, thought I wouldn't… thought too highly of the mason's of Gondor."
"Are you alright, Lord Faramir?" Eldarion peered through the crack in the door. He cringed as he watched his mentor, one of the kindest, most intelligent people he knew, struggle bravely to stand, leaving bloodied handprints on the marble. "I'm not a skin-changer. We're here to rescue you!" he felt around in his pockets fruitlessly but found nothing that he could use to pick the lock.
"What do you need?" Holleg looked down at him.
"My mother would have me wearing my hair long like an elf," Eldarion grumbled, "then maybe I would have a mithril hairpin to turn the tumblers, but I have nothing," he admitted with a shrug.
Holleg nodded and thought for a moment, then, raising one finger in thought, he pulled aside his tunic from his fine mail shirt, which was fastened at the breast by a long silver pin that interlaced the two sides of the breastplate.
"I did not expect you to possess such a skillset, my prince." Holleg gave him a bemused smirk as he adjusted his tunic under his baldrick so that the silver stitching of the two swans on either side of the white tree lay flat.
"Uncle Elrohir taught me as a joke." Eldarion pushed his hair behind his tapered ears as he carefully bent to insert his tool into the lock. "Thought I wouldn't remember."
"So, the dark wizard has the keys to the palace." Holleg shook his head as he watched the prince work.
"That's comforting…" the prince growled in frustration, "the lock is broken!" he struck the door with his fist, "What have you been doing to it, hitting it with a rock?!"
Faramir laughed deliriously. That was exactly what he had been doing. "truly, you have no key?" he said, and the tone of his voice changed.
"I told you!" Eldarion rattled the door fruitlessly, "I'm not a skin-changer. I'm the prince!" he felt the pin slip over something, and with a groan and a click, the twisted metal gave way. "help me pull!" he said to Holleg and with both of them pulling on the handle and a great deal of screaming, twisting metal the whole contraption fell open and light poured into the stairwell. The prince and the captain fell on their backsides, and both of them were momentarily grateful as Eldarion slid down a few stairs, clumsy on his hurt leg, that the architects of centuries past had not made the door open the other way.
"Lord Faramir!" Eldarion called out, scrambling upwards and through the door. He took the haft from his belt and held it out; in its radiance he saw the spirit of his friend and mentor. For a moment, Eldarion stood and was overcome suddenly by an immense sense of vertigo as if his senses were violently inverted. A sharp wind buffeted his face out of the north. The sense of the incredible height crawled up the backs of his legs, and he fell to his knees in fear and disorientation.
"I've come to rescue you." The boy said, crawling forward with his eyes fixed between his hands. Faramir blinked at him; his eyes were dilated, and the hands he raised in wonder and defense were bloodied and raw. He gazed upon the stone in wonder. To his drugged senses, it seemed to radiate with a geometric pool of dark light. He banished the hallucination from his mind and focused on the prince's face.
"I clawed through the mortar." Faramir said weakly, following the captain's gaze where it fell upon his bloody hands. "to unhook my hands from the railing." Faramir shook his head, blinking away the fog of the drugs that had been forced into his body. "you can't be here." He said to the prince, who seemed to have decided that the edge of the doorframe was as far out onto the platform as he was going to go.
"I told you, I'm Eldarion. It's me, the real me!" he reached out and grabbed the steward's ankle to prove that he was substantial. Faramir only looked at him in deepening suspicion.
"I mean, you can't be here, my lord." Faramir sounded more clear-headed. He sat up and looked at the prince. "You have to run. The wizard Pallando. He put a bomb in the base of the tower."
.
"Looters in the catacombs, sir," the guard explained, "one of them is claiming to be your brother, asking for you by name. We have them confined until you can confirm his identity."
"I'll go." Elladan stood with an exhausted cringe. He put his good hand on his sister's shoulder and looked down at Aragorn impatiently, willing him to awaken. The bruises under his eyes had deepened to a soft purple, and swelling had set in in the battered left side of his face. He had been cleaned and dressed in silk and showed no sign of real awareness throughout the process. Elladan had drained a large hematoma from the left side of his skull, gently replaced the largest broken bit of eggshell-like bone, secured it loosely so that the tissues would not be damaged by inflammation, and sewn the wound closed. The Elven Taboo against haircutting prevented Elladan from shaving his head. He had lovingly washed the blood from his hair, triggering a razor-sharp memory of a six-year-old Estel coming to him with a wad of pine tar in his ringlets. Elladan's centuries of experience as a trauma surgeon told him that prolonged unconsciousness after a head injury was to be expected and that every minute that passed reduced his chances of recovery. They were running out of time. "You should eat something." He urged his sister. Eowyn had left a package of shortbread on the side table beside a carafe of water. Elladan smoothed down his niece's brown curls where she lay clutched against her mother's chest, her large grey eyes watching her father sleeping in bafflement.
Arwen nodded but did not take her hand from her husband's, "I will." She assured him gently.
Elladan turned to see Tulk and Gimli had left. He followed the guard through the swinging door. Elladan found the two dwarves outside in the pillared cloister overlooking the city; it was a beautiful summer day, and the scent of trumpet vines wafted up from the gardens with the sound of distant singing. Gimli was weeping openly, his back to the hall and both of his hands on the banister. Tulk was sitting on the floor beside him, seemingly deep in thought.
"Will he live?" Gimli asked thickly.
"That remains to be seen." Elladan stepped up beside him, "The longer he sleeps, the less likely he is to wake."
"Someone needs to tell the elf," Gimli said, sniffing.
"I'm sure that word will reach South Ithillien soon." Elladan watched a seagull take off from one of the rooftops below him, cawing mournfully as it caught an updraft and soared out over the ruined marketplace. His heart ached.
"Do you think they caught the bastard?" the dwarf looked up at him with red-rimmed eyes.
"Would you come and see?" Elladan asked.
"Aye." Elladan recognized the gleam of vengeance in the Dwarf's eye.
"You stay here," he ordered Tulk, still uncomfortable with the amount of misfortune that seemed to follow him. "If Prince Eldarion and Captain Holleg return, you can tell them where I've gone."
"Yessir." Tulk looked up at him seriously.
.
Arwen held her daughter close to her chest, listening to Elladan's receding footsteps, and felt utterly abandoned. One of the king's personal guards stood beside the door in stone-faced silence. The ornate sick room was a meager reflection of the healing halls in Imladris, and the gripping silence of her parents' presence in her mind seemed to make the false neo-Noldorin architecture feel like an insult, a childish mockery of forgotten beauty. She had not her father's power to heal flesh and nerve with a song and a touch; none in Middle Earth did in these fading years.
Even the innocent presence of the child fussing hungrily in her arms only brought her feelings of dread. Repulsed by this twisting of her motherly instincts, she sat up straight with a sigh, and cooing softly, she pulled down the neckline of her dress, the same dusty, sweaty sun dress she had worn in the market the day before (the one that made her husband's hands wander salaciously whenever they were alone together) and offered the child her breast. Celiriel looked up at her with Aragorn's round grey eyes. Her face stuffed enthusiastically against her mother's nipple, she reached up and grabbed a lock of dark hair. Celiriel was almost old enough to be weaned, and when the child inside of Arwen's body was born, she would be taking her first steps; the nauseating thought occurred to her that she might never know her father. Arwen thought of her mother, who had nursed both of her brothers at once and suffered through the prolonged gestation common to her people. She wanted nothing more than to ask for her advice.
And now Eldarion had turned against her. She knew that the boy was reacting out of grief, and she feared that whatever power he had uncovered was twisting his mind. He had looked at her with fear and confusion as if she was a stranger to him. She had ordered Captain Holleg to find him and bring him back. She was concerned for her son and, more so, concerned that he had stumbled upon some dangerous and unknown power that he believed to be lifesaving. The boy had seen death and, in Luthien-like audacity, had seized whatever power he had at hand to stand between Namo and the one he loved. She could feel the stone like a gravitational center, a vortex in the background of her senses. Not an active and hungry evil like the power that had been destroyed with the One Ring, but the subtle and inescapable pull of entropy. The stone could save lives, but for every life it restored, it would take more from the living. She feared that her son's audacity would be the doom of their family.
The small sigh from the infant in her arms told Arwen that she was settling into sleep. Celiriel did not know to be afraid yet. Arwen stood and laid the child in the bassinet to sleep. Returning empty-handed to her vigil, she eyed the shortbread on the side table and reluctantly held it in her lap as he took her seat beside the bed.
"Wake up," she begged, caressing her husband's knuckles with one thumb, "we need you."
.
Elladan and Gimli followed the guard across the plaza. It was nearly noon, and the shadow cast by the tower of Ecthelion was nearly a circle at its base. The voices of gathered mourners came from the broad stairways where the whole city seemed to have gathered to hear the word of their beloved king. Elladan had no heart to face them yet when so much hung in the balance.
They came to the holding cells in the palace, usually used for the short-term confinement of those criminals who were brought before the king's judgment. It was a sparsely furnished room, too large to be comfortable; like most of the palace, it was made of austere black and white marble with benches around the walls and a heavy metal grate for a door that locked ominously.
"Like I said, we found them trying to loot the catacombs, Sir." The guard explained, "First, it was just the man and the woman, but then the other two showed up, and he was asking to see you specifically, so I figured we'd get ya."
"I understand." Elladan stepped into the holding cell. There were four people inside: a bearded, elderly Easterling man in long lavender blue robes, a guilty-looking Haradi girl around twenty, a fat Gondorian boy who stood in front of her defensively, and his brother. His erstwhile identical twin looked much the worse for wear. Elrohir was wearing ill-fitting peasant's clothes, he was covered in soot, and a good bit of his hair had been singed off. He was speaking to the old man. Elladan choked back a sob of soul-deep relief, and his expression burst into a genuine smile.
Allatar caught a glance of the newcomers and turned pale in an instant. He turned to Elrohir, who had just recognized his twin, and grabbed him by the wrist.
"The guard!" Allatar mouthed his back to the door, pulling Elrohir down to his height, his mind working quickly.
Elrohir's eyes flashed from his brother to the innocuous-looking sable-clad city guardsman by the door. He held the palace keys on a large ring at his belt, a ring marked with the seal of the house of Hurin, a ring that belonged to Faramir, son of Denethor and Lord of Ithillien.
He made eye contact with Elladan, his expression stiff but urgent, and desperately poured his voice into his brother's mind. Before Elladan could step forward to express his joy and relief at seeing his twin alive, he was assaulted by the urgent and fearful feeling of his Ossanwe.
The guard, the guard at the door. Elladan glanced behind him, his eyes flickered back to Elrohir and he suddenly understood; the skin-changer meant to lock them away in here, clearing the path to his sister and the children.
"Nice try, demon," Elladan said aloud to his brother instead of embracing him. He grabbed the chains that bound Elrohir's wrists to his ankles and pulled him off the bench and onto his knees.
Elrohir looked up at him in confusion, hoping desperately that Elladan had a plan. Elladan always had a plan.
"A clumsy replica," Elladan observed, falling into his desperate trickery with ease, "but my brother's hairline is further back." He smirked confidentially at the Dwarf, who looked slightly confused.
"Is that not lord Elrohir." Gimli put one hand on the axe he had in his belt and looked between the twins with concern.
"A poor facsimile." He looked back at the guard, "You see, I'm not so easily fooled." He flashed a hand signal to Gimli on the hidden side of his body, and the dwarf's mouth made an O of comprehension. Elladan cursed his bound arm as he stepped back to allow the dwarf to dive past him. His axe flew free of his belt as it came up and around and made contact with the mail girt thigh of the guard.
"You fools!" Pallando screeched as he shifted back into the shape of a man in blue-black robes. He made for the door with inhuman speed, and the ring of keys clattered to the ground.
"Get the keys!" Elladan barked as he realized that Gimli, five paces ahead of him, would not reach the door in time. A slithering, dark tentacle shot out. The dwarf dodged it, but stumbling and reaching for the keys, he gave the wizard just enough time to slip through the bars. The bolt on the locking mechanism fell with an ominous click.
Gimli swore loudly in Khudzul. Grabbing the bars of the door and shaking them uselessly.
"Pity," the old man said as he stepped into the darkness, disappearing except for the lights of his eyes and his cool laughter, "you almost had me, brother."
"These people never asked for this, Anta-wirne!" Allatar came up behind the dwarf, hoping that the use of his brother in the music's Quenya name would bring him a feeling of familiarity. He looked at his ancient friend whose soul had once burned with high wisdom and sighed to see his fall. "Return with me to Aman," he tried to sound gentle. "Let us find healing!" He reached a frail hand through the bars.
"I will heal when my mission is complete." Pallando's tone was cold and patronizing.
"And what is your mission, brother?" he asked, still attempting to sound reasonable through his rising panic.
"To eradicate magic in Middle Earth." The statement was a matter of fact, as if such a matter was as simple as eradicating an ant infection.
"And you truly believe that is what the Valar want?!" Allatar looked at his brother, desperate to get through to him before he lay more horror at the feet of these innocent people. He risked going a bit further, "think of Melian." But this was apparently the wrong thing to say because Pallando seemed to dissolve into a writhing mass of chaos for an instant before rushing back to the door of the cage in a single terrible leap. His bright teeth became snapping jaws, and his eyes burned yellow as a ravenous wolf. Allatar stumbled backward into Gimli.
"Do not speak of the whore who left me for a child!" his rage blazed forth in a moment of maddening eldritch fury. Elladan stumbled backward and felt Elrohir catch him as his feet were pulled from under him, and he discovered too late that he could not catch himself with his bound arm. The Haradi woman screamed, and a flash of light illuminated the small chamber.
"You will not harm them!" Allatar put up his hands, and the creature slunk back, still hissing and twitching in rage. A swarm of fairy lights surrounded him, and his whole being glimmered with a dreamy iridescence.
"All towers fall," came the deep, hissing voice. A living shadow seemed to swallow the outer corridors.
.