Tulk watched Gimli disappear into the palace with the Peredhil. He did not care for the feeling of hopelessness and guilt that was growing in the pit of his chest. He stood beside the door and looked down the rows of grim, mannish faces. The day was growing hot and clear, and the sun beat on his balding head. The city had gone into a state of emergency; nobody was being allowed into the Fountain Court, and suspicion was already eating through their defenses as easily as the mightiest battering ram. He had shot the wrong twin; part of him knew that anyone would have had a fifty-fifty chance in such a situation, but it was too much of a coincidence for him to ignore. He felt responsible for whatever dark magic had so frightened the Queen.
He was an honest dwarf, hard-working, creative, and pragmatic. Could it be that he harbored some deep hatred for these pampered Firstborn nobles? No, Tulk's broad fingers tensed and relaxed around the haft of the axe at his belt, too, bore a lavish setting of the treasured elvish gems. They gleamed in shades of pink and ruby. His only sin was a love of the fabulous.
Tulk had purchased the supposedly cursed stone as part of a lot of decorative gems from a merchant in the Ered Luin. It had been a broken fragment of an older stone, a radiant shade of deep purple and the size of a goose egg, cut in the middle-Noldorin style to show its radiance. Now it was only a shard of the original Jewel. The merchant, an enormously fat old dwarf with clever fingers and watery blue eyes like aquamarines, had sworn on the Anvil of Mahal that it was a Gwaith-Mirdain original, despite Tulk's own resonance testing showing its magical potential to be minimal.
But the color had won him over. Over provenance and power, he was a dwarf with an eye for the glamourous. He had gained great fame as a weaponsmith, and it had been his hard-earned business for decades, but he had the heart of a jeweler. He leaned over the box of gems, a brass loop making one of his eyes appear enormous. Delicate as a new mother, he used a pair of tongs to lift the purple gem, turning it to catch the light that spilled over the jewel merchant's counter.
He had haggled the merchant down nearly fifty percent by arguing that most of the weight of the stone would be lost when it was recut. Ultimately, Tulk had rejoined the caravan, returning to Erabor with a notebook full of ideas for how he would use the stones, and, besides, when he had placed them in their settings, he had thought very little of them since.
Tulk straightened when he saw Prince Eldarion limping towards him from the palace. He had the broken haft of the hammer in his belt. The guards at the door stiffened as he passed.
"Master dwarf," the prince greeted him. He seemed to have recovered from his earlier emotional outburst.
"My lord prince," something felt off, "Was Commander Holleg not with you?"
"He is seeing to the security deployment in the city," Eldarion answered smoothly, looking around at the grim faces. "I was on the way to see my mother; I believe that I owe her an apology."
Tulk drank in a deep breath, and a feeling of cold dread gripped him. He had been wrong before; he studied the boy's grey eyes and his easy smile, but in the blinding light of the afternoon sun, his half-elven features took on uncanny proportions, and for a moment, Tulk froze. Was this the skin changer?
"Eldarion!" both of their eyes were drawn to Lady Eowyn's voice. She wore breeches and a belted tunic as if she were prepared to ride or fight. Her gardening shears had been replaced with a sword. The prince turned to her, hands raised, "May I see that broken haft you carry on your hip?" trying to hide her shortened breath, trying to sound gentle as if she was prying a toy from a child.
Slowly, with a glance at the dwarf, Eldarion drew the handle from his belt. "for what reason?" he asked, glancing at her nervously.
"Its dangerous, Eldarion!" she held out one hand. "It's more dangerous than you can possibly know." She studied the boy, and she felt the dwarf dissecting her in the same way.
"What is it?" he asked, looking at the stone. "Why is it dangerous?"
"I had," she closed her eyes and spoke quickly, "I had a dream." She spoke slowly and tried to convey urgency, "The stone must be destroyed. We do not fully understand the breadth of its power!"
"But why, I still don't und…" as Eldarion was speaking, Tulk stepped up behind him. He reached out to snatch the broken haft with one hand, but his fingers closed on a thin wand of dark wood. The illusion was shattered, and the prince turned to black smoke for a moment.
"Imposter!" Eowyn's sword rang out with a flash in the summer sun. The guards at the fountain reacted to her cry immediately and came running across the plaza. She lunged at the swirling darkness, but he was swift to take on the form of many birds, slipping around her in a whirlwind of shadow before materializing behind her as she stumbled at the absence of resistance. Pallando laughed down at her, a deep, echoing sound out of primordial darkness. She snarled in rage as she saw her husband's keyring hanging from his belt. But his laughter dissolved into a grunt of pain as Tulk brought the blunt side of his axe, glittering with repurposed Noldorin gems, down on the old man's crown of grey locks. To his shock, Tulk actually met resistance as the blow struck against his dome. The Wizard fell hard onto his backside in a pile of midnight robes.
"What did you do with the boy!" Tulk demanded with a growl, stepping between him and Eowyn.
Pallando laughed, righting himself. It was a sound with a deep throaty clicking like some eldritch bird. The guards had closed around him, lowering their polearms.
"The Halfbreed," he answered in a hiss, "and that accursed stone which he carries are already in their tomb!" He sounded crazed, and moving with theatrical gestures, he did not feel Eowyn snatch the keys from his belt. "The Cursed line of Numenor is severed!" He laughed triumphantly. Eowyn clutched the decorative ring, her thumb tracing the seal of the house of Hurin wrought in cool brass as she slipped it into her pocket. It was solid. It was real. It was evidence that Pallando had Faramir. Tulk roared with rage and took a mighty swing at the dark wizard, but his axe blade passed through thin air as he dissolved into smoke and fluttering wings once more.
They watched as the swirling mass of birds gyrated and swirled up, up up into the brilliant summer sky. It landed upon the uppermost pinnacle of the tower, merging into a single monstrous shape, visible for miles around the city, its long tail wrapped possessively around the white tower, spreading dark wings that cast a wide shadow across the fountain plaza. Eowyn wasted only a brief moment in gazing up after the swirling murmuration before slamming her sword into its sheath and sprinting towards the palace. The mourners upon the stairs screamed in horror and panic.
.
There was a mighty BOOM; dust rained down from the masonry, and the light from the door above them went dark. Eldarion's eyes shot upward, and for a moment, his breath stopped. He clutched the railing behind him and closed his eyes, preparing himself for the feeling of falling.
Click, click, click came the sounds of dark and hideous laughter from above them. Eldarion felt Holleg step in front of them, sword drawn and face grim. A living shadow, all tentacles and inky swaths of concealing darkness seemed to fill the top of the tower. He felt Faramir step in front of him protectively, and a wave of panic swept over him as he was vividly reminded of his father tackling him in the marketplace, not again. Pallando materialized on the curving stone stair above them.
"Get back, demon!" Holleg shouted, rushing up towards the wizard. For a moment, he was heroic before the swirling darkness, his black curls loose in the wind and his sword shining as a beacon against the horrible void. He struck out with his blade, arching through the shadows with a shout of "Amroth!" but before he could touch the wizard, Pallando had raised a casual hand as if to flick the swan knight like a troublesome insect. Eldarion heard himself scream as the Commander's body limp as a doll was thrown across the open space in the center of the tower to crash into the steps on the far side with a crack.
Faramir elbowed him in the chest to keep him against the wall.
"No!" Eldarion forced down the fear that rose like bile in his throat. He squirmed to get away from Faramir, put weight awkwardly on his injured leg, and slid down a few stairs before he went slamming onto his hands and knees with a gasp of pain. Looking up, he saw the broken haft lying a few steps above his face level and the dark form of the wizard looming over Faramir, who weakened and unarmed, was trying to stand between his prince and doom.
"Don't hurt him!" Eldarion screamed, grabbing for the haft.
Pallando laughed hungrily, "So this is the infamous stone?" purple light reflected in his narrowed eyes as the prince held it aloft and scrambled to stand at Faramir's side. "the Eye of Mandos - one of the last Fëanorian stones in Middle Earth." Ancient hate simmered underneath the surface of his words. "a polished shard of the Palantir of Finwé," he relished the rolling Quenya, "the horse woman spoke true."
"You want it?" Eldarion stepped forward, and Faramir grabbed his shoulder in warning. "If I give it to you, will you leave my people in peace?"
"I will take it from your corpse, child…" Pallando stepped down.
"No!" Faramir shouted as he saw the wizard raise his arm again, but the boy was already moving. Eldarion swung the broken handle and met the wizard's phantasmal force in mid-air. There was a sound like shattering ice and a soul-deep pulse of cosmic energy that seemed to shake the tower to its foundations. There was a rip, a roar, and for a moment, the tower was filled with wind.
"Namo!" Pallando crumbled to his knees, gazing into the rift in terror. And then, as if reality simply closed around him, the blue wizard was gone, and with him the purple gem.
In the same moment, Eldarion felt his legs pulled from under him. Faramir's hand was pulled from his shoulder as they both hit the sloping stairs, tumbling out of control for half a turn. Eldarion skid towards the plummet, his feet seeking purchase on the slick marble and his eyes going round in panic. For a moment, he was frozen in fear as his center of gravity slipped over the edge, and his fingers lost their purchase on the tread. The spiraling plummet went down, down, down in a deadly plunge towards the archive rotunda far below. Where red fairy lights were dancing in a flurry of panic. Above them, the stone shattered, blasting great chunks of marble outward and letting the afternoon sunlight invade the shadows.
Faramir's hand tangled in Eldarion's tunic and with a grunt and a panicked whimper from the prince, he was dragged back to safety. He lay gasping in terror in the steward's arms, shaking hands pulled to his chest.
"You're safe." Faramir clutched Eldarion to his chest, his eyes searching for any sign of the wizard. "I think he's gone."
"Holleg!" Eldarion pushed Faramir away as he scrambled his way down to where the Commander was just starting to wake up.
"My head." He squeezed his eyes shut, tried to stand, put weight on his arm, and yelped in agony.
"Easy." Eldarion cringed, recognizing the commander's splintered ulna from an old Sindarin anatomy book that his father liked. It had not been poking through the skin in that picture. "I think your arm is broken." The prince offered helpfully, dusting himself off and wincing as he felt moisture spreading under the bandages on his leg. He let himself down heavily beside the commander. Holleg frowned at his young liege lord. His head throbbed. A wave of nausea swept over him, and he only managed to miss the prince by a few inches with his watery, coffee-flavored vomit.
"Ai, Eru, that hurts." Holleg gasped.
"Um…" Eldarion licked his lips. He thought about what his uncle Elladan or his father would do. "I think we need to go to the healers." He put out his hands experimentally and sang a few lines of hesitant Quenya. "it's meant to help." Holleg was smiling at him with tears in his eyes. He chuckled, gingerly cradling his shattered arm.
"It does help," Holleg smirked, but the boy's smile faded.
"And I want to check on my father," he looked up at Faramir; a horrible mix of worry and guilt crept upon the prince. The stone was gone, and now his clutching onto it seemed a profound insanity.
"Can you walk?" Faramir asked, still hovering protectively close to the prince. "We are not yet out of danger," he peered carefully down into the archive below, where a small swarm of red lights were busy ripping an elaborate device made of what looked like clay and paper into a chaotic mess. "I suspect that I have found Pallando's device."