Gimli sighed and looked down at the wax tablet where he was tallying the mangled wares from the destruction of the market. He was impressed with the efficiency of the cleanup, dwarvish work crews had been removing rubble for the past few days and the remains of the destroyed market had started to become visible. If he was to be honest, he preferred doing something productive to waiting in the miserable gloom of the Palace Infirmary. Faramir had set a trial date for the suspected thieves, saying that he would know how to proceed once the king's condition had resolved, one way or another.
They had reached the part of the market where the bomb had gone off. A dejected Tulk, beard unbraided like a maiden or one in mourning, had recovered the tattered remnants of his inventory book and was trying, unsuccessfully, to make an even account of it all. Anja and Nic went back and forth with wheelbarrows full of rubble, transferring them to the dwarvish wagon standing with its hatch open and a team of nervous ponies looking over their shoulders and wiggling their braided tails.
Gimli looked down at the brown stains on the pale marble, wondering what strange fortune had brought this evil upon them. He sent his spirit across the sea, wandering after the innocents who had died here. He shook his head. He had seen war in his life, wars where the brave had the opportunity to live by their prowess or die by their valor. This was not war.
This was an act of mass murder.
"No, no, no!" Tulk scolded Nic as he tossed aside a bit of scrap metal with his shovel, "Can't you see that this is the ten percent tin alloy?" he scolded, his ill temper overflowing onto the human. He placed the metal where it belonged and checked something on the battered tablet.
"Master dwarf?" Anja stood, she held a gold ring in her fingers, "is this yours?" she asked, holding it out.
Tulk sighed and took the ring which he had thrown away in disgust, he turned the rubies in the afternoon sunlight, they pulsed and glowed as if with a heartbeat.
…
Eldarion rushed under Glorfindel's arm before he could hold him back and the two elf lords had no choice but to follow him into the darkness. The red light that shone from Anduril's blade reflected from his eager eyes and glowed upon the walls of the tunnel as they advanced down a long, shallow stair. The air became still, and the distant rumors of war disappeared behind them.
Eldarion looked back at the light of morning behind Finrod's head; his braids were still undone, and his pale hair shimmered in a halo around him. A living silence seemed to press from every direction until Eldarion could hear his own breathing and the nearly soundless footfalls of the two elves behind him. He let one hand touch the wall as he went and was surprised to find that it was smooth, as if polished by a master mason.
They went on in silence, each feeling like they were entering a tomb. Glorfindel walked behind the boy, spear in hand, ready to pull him back from any danger that might lurk in the darkness.
After a long descent, the three of them came to another opening, but this one, it seemed, had been made ready for them, for even as they approached, the stone split, and a warm, oil- scented air blew into their faces.
"What is this place?" Glorfindel said, putting one hand on the boy's shoulder, stepping forward into the next chamber, and straightening his spine with relief. Finrod stepped forward, and it seemed to Eldarion that the two of them had a soft light emanating from their bodies.
Eldarion squinted into the darkness. He could see rank upon rank of stocky stone figures standing in endless files under an undulating ceiling of glimmering gems. Shimmering oil painted their feet black. Immediately in front of him, one of the statues stood apart from the rest; his belly was round, and his helm was adorned with a crown. His sculpted beard went down to his knees in lush curls, and his eyes were dark and hillow as he met the void of the entranceway with his empty gaze.
Gimli's words, spoken beside the fountain an eternity ago, echoed through Eldarion's mind: A creation contains the soul of its maker. The rocks, the water, the sky, and the stars are all alive with the souls of the Valar, and we ourselves are alive with the living spirit of Mahal.
"Take care!" He felt Finrod's hand on his shoulder as he spoke, "A single spark will set this place alight." Eldarion looked at the blade in his hand and saw it glowing white hot at the tip as if freshly pulled from the forge. The dim light gleamed from the sweat beginning to shine on his brow and from the ringing silver links on his helm. His hands clenched around the hilt, and he focused his thoughts on the memory of his father's face. What do I do? He asked.
"I hear something," Glorfindel said a second before the ground trembled beneath their feet.
"That's a dragon," Finrod's Harp was in his hands as he stepped protectively in front of the prince. The next moment, a bright light spilled from the ceiling across the cavern as several large chunks of stone crashed through, followed by a shower of debris and bodies. The sounds of the dragon, which the elves had heard, echoed from the newly opened skylight, and many more chunks of masonry came crashing down after him as his cries of rage receded.
The crash was followed by the shrieking howls of a rain of undead as they crashed in mindless rage into the cavern. Light streamed into that place, which had never been touched by the glory of the skies. The walking corpses recovered their feet, slick with black oil. Their eyes glowed purple as they turned their faces towards the three intruders and began scrambling with unnatural speed through the statues.
Finrod pushed Eldarion back towards the opening, an urgent chant of protection on his lips as the ground shook again.
"Wait," Eldarion stepped away from his uncle's restraining hand, "I think that's what I'm meant to do." Trembling, nearly sure that he was stepping into his firey doom, he stepped forward and touched the white hit tip of the blade to the shining liquid. There was a great
rushing sound as the air around them combusted. All three staggered back, and Eldarion was knocked from his feet. To his amazement, the wave of spreading fire went out from them in all directions, leaving those at its center untouched.
First, the tall dwarf's eyes glowed red and then white as he shook a crumbling skin of bedrock from his great black beard and stretched stiff muscles.
"My lord calls," he said in a voice like a landfall, "and Durin the Deathless will answer." He looked upon Eldarion curiously, and his bright eyes almost softened, "Who would wield the flame of the Maker?" He looked up at the two elves as if studying them. Eldarion was aware, in his peripheral that the eyes on the other statues had begun to glow with magma bright forge light.
"My name is Eldarion of House Telcontar, prince of the Reunited kingdom and heir of Isildur," He spoke clearly over the sound of the quickly approaching hungry dead, "Mandos is fallen." The firelight reflected on his mail, "I call upon you to fight beside me as allies." Eldarion thought that his voice sounded like it belonged to someone much older and braver than he.
Durin turned, hearing the howls of the dead. "Have the final days come so quickly?" he muttered, smelling their foul reek in the smoky air. He raised his axe as, all around, fearsome dwarvish warriors were shaking themselves free of stone in the flaming oil.
"Baruk Khazâd! Khazâd ai-mênu!" Durin cried. All his folk, and Finrod Felagund too, answered.
…
Elrond was looking at Aragorn strangely. The man walked as if in a daze and limped without Damrod to support him, "How much farther down must we go?" he asked, wishing he had a moment for comfort.
"Do not wish that you had followed," Elrond said quietly, one comforting hand around Aragorn's arm, "You have led them on their path to the One. The time is not yet right for you to follow. Not yet."
"He murdered children to get to me," Aragorn put out one hand to lean on the wall.
"And you granted them peace and comfort at the end." Elrond squeezed his arm, and in that moment, the look of devastation in the man's noble features reminded him of his long-lost twin. The elvish warriors passed them by as he stopped to pull his foster son into his arms, "and we will have our revenge," he promised tearfully, "Pallando stands at the right hand of the Necromancer and grants him his power," he looked Aragorn in the eye, holding the sides of his head protectively, "we must strike down the servant for the master to fall."
"I would have followed them were you not here," Aragorn confessed, swallowing his tears and turning his eyes from the light.
"I know." He responded, generously pouring out healing into the man's breaking heart. "I know."
They descended many shattered turns of the great well. Soon, the glow from down below them became hot, and a cloud of thick smoke began to arise from the pit. The armed warriors went before them among the shifting shadows, their footfalls like chimes on the worn stone.
"There are many winding paths to the surface. One is just ahead," Miriel told them, "Let us hope that they are not all held against us." She held up her skirt as her grandsons assisted her over a broken tread. Maedhros smelled the air and gave his brother a look of warning as he drew the sword he had taken from the wall. He spun it experimentally in his left hand.
"They're coming." He said.
One of the warriors in the vanguard shouted something, and looking across the open space, the elves could see a great wave of crawling dead oozing up towards them from below. The nauseating smell of roast, rotten meat arose in the smokey air, and Aragorn repressed his urge to vomit.
Fingolfin shouted a command, and his warriors brought their shields up to meet the onslaught. Ringil flashed out like a shard of ice against the fire as it had not shone since he fell to the hand of Morgoth in the first age. Flanked by two tall warriors, he stepped lightly onto the banister, crouched, and launched himself into the oncoming dead a level down.
For a moment, Aragorn weighed whether he could make the jump to follow, and then he felt Elrond's scolding glance on him as he was pulled to stand at his back. The three warriors crashed into the onslaught with a terrible bloodlust, dividing the group above from those streaming up from below on their cold blades.
The dead broke upon their shields with the force of a battering ram. Clawing with pale, bony fingers and clacking together tusked jaws that sprayed caustic spittle as they were skewered and hewn and thrown into the darkness.
The dead screamed as the shield wall heaved as one, and they were thrown backward and sideways into the pit. But many others climbed up the inside of the stairs like a swarm of hungry insects. Aragorn drew his sword and found that his grief had turned to rage as he stood back to back with Elrond.
The dead came on relentlessly, and he soon found himself lost in the cathartic frenzy of battle as the purple-eyed demons clambered for his throat as, one after another, the monsters fell before him, headless or screaming over the edge. They fought for what could have been days until his shoulders burned. He could not spare a glance as he heard one of the elves dragged under.
"When will it end?" He gasped, kicking another one over the stone railing and wincing as his hurt knee protested.
Elrond looked back at him as if he would answer. He had bleeding claw marks across his cheek, and his hair was wild; his eyes showed a glimmer of fear. Snarling like a cornered
dog, he lashed out at the next enemy and the next. He had no answer for his mortal son except to keep fighting.
"Listen!" someone shouted, and all heard it. A strong and joyful voice singing out of the darkness and, in deep harmonies, the chanting stamps of thousands of voices raised in dwarfish battle song.
"Finderato, is that you?" Fingolfin's voice was clear over the slavering chorus of the dead. They rushed to the banister to see that the dead were not just running up the stairs but being driven in terror at the cruel light of forge-red axes.
"Break through! Break through!" Elrond was yelling down a level to where the three elvish warriors slashed their way through the last of the dead.
"Who is it?" Aragorn felt something stir in his heart but did not dare to believe it.
"Allies," he looked up to see the vanguard of warriors dashing ahead of them. From below, he could hear Fingolfin's voice raised as he spoke to the newcomers. He seemed confused, and a voice he recognized as Glorfindel's answered him patiently.
"Please, I'm just looking for my father." A human's voice interrupted the elven lords, and Aragorn felt his knees buckle as, a moment later, Eldarion came running up the stairs, stepping over headless corpses and trailing an army of dwarves.
"Ada!" Eldarion was dressed like a prince of Nagothrond. He had Anduril hanging at one hip and his face bloomed into a suddenly tearful smile as he ran forward. "I came to rescue you!" He slammed into his father hard enough to tip him onto his backside, and Aragorn's sword went clattering onto the stairs. He held his father close to him with all the strength in his spirit, and Aragorn could only hold him back in desperate hope that this wasn't an illusion.
He breathed in the smell of him mingled with Glorfindel's perfume over the reek of the dead, clutching at his back to ensure he didn't turn to dust in his arms and gazing up at the two elf lords in gratitude.
"The prince arises from fire and darkness at the head of the armies of Navatar," Fingolfin removed his helm, a strange look on his marred features as he watched Eldarion. He shook his head as if dispelling a troublesome vision and turned to Miriel, who was smiling secretively.
"Where is this supposed Necromancer?" he asked.
...
Their reunions were filled with tears and songs of greeting as the two groups met halfway up an endless stairwell between unity and nothingness, surrounded by the hewn bodies of their enemies on all sides.
Aragorn gasped as a tearful Glorfindel put his arms around both him and Eldarion in a nearly suffocating embrace. Then, seeing Elrond behind them, he took his lord's arm in a warrior's handshake. Finrod looked as if he was doing elaborate political calculations as he counted Fëanorians with widening eyes and wondered where the rest of them were.
Caranthir ignored him and rushed past to question Durin and his lieutenants in heavily accented Khuzdul about where they had come from. It was immediately evident that he was the only one capable of bridging the language barrier efficiently.
There was a passage exactly where the Dead Queen said there would be. With a battalion of dwarves and Noldorin warriors, led by their fey king, going before them, they felt free to speak.
"Eldarion," Elrond looked at his grandson like a priceless jewel. The boy glanced at his father, bowed politely with no recognition, and called him Sir when they were introduced. Elrond's eyes were bright and penetrating as they set his grandson's face into tender memory. He wanted to scoop the boy up in his arms, to learn the libraries of his mind and watch him grow into a kind and just king. For now, Eldarion looked up at him through his daughter's grey eyes and saw a stranger. "Tell us how you came here. You are not one of the dead. Some other power is at work here."
"I found a stone…" he began, and Aragorn watched his son with an awe-struck expression as Eldarion told the story of all that had brought him here. About the two blue wizards, how Allatar had taught him how to sing, Pallando's nefarious shapeshifting, and all the chaos he had caused. He told his father about his mother's grief and how they were all talking about him dying and how everyone had given up, but his new dwarf friend had said that they could use Anduril to anchor the ritual. He told his father about going into the catacombs and waking up under the mallorn trees and meeting Riele, fleeing from the undead orcs and being saved by Glorfindel and going to the camp and meeting his grandmother and the queen and Finrod. Elrond walked behind the boy, smiling indulgently at the sound of his eager voice in these dim cellars.
"And then there was this elf, and he was riding a huge," Eldarion gestured demonstratively, "Spider with fangs as long as my arm. And Finrod killed the spider by singing at it, but he broke his harp, and Glorfindel swept his spear around and chopped off the mad elf's head!" He grinned up at his father and did not see the white-hot look of horror that Maedhros shot the Golden-haired warrior. "I want to learn how to fight with a spear!" he said, oblivious to the heated telepathic argument happening over his head.
Aragorn knew, intellectually, that he had gone on his first 'hunting trips' with Elladan and Elrohir when he was only a few summers older than his son. He knew that he had seen much worse in his long and violent youth, but hearing the casual celebration of death from his child and heir stung like a barb in his heart. He had labored for so many long years to create a peaceful world for Eldarion and his sisters to grow up in, and he knew with bitter certainty that he had failed.
"Say his name, Loro." Maedhros challenged Glorfindel out loud, an edge of hurt to his voice. "He threatened a…"
"Say his name!"
"Stop!" Elrond stepped between them, both his elders by yeni, born in the noontide of Valinor under the lights of the trees, supposedly mature elf lords. "Tyelkormo chose death." He laid a hand on Maedhros' chest, "The Silence will come for all of us if your brother's schemes take root. You know what has to be done if you would ever hope to see him again."
Maedhros looked up to where Caranthir had stopped to look back at them.
"Beheaded?" his dark brother stopped and gave the human boy an intense look as if noticing him for the first time, "and left to rot in a field?"
"His name was Tyelkormo Feanorion, and he died trying to drag a mortal boy into torment." Glorfindel stepped before him, clearly prepared to make himself a Kinslayer twice over in defense of his lord's family.
Eldarion gave his father a scandalized glance and cringed. "He was already dead." He muttered, but not quietly enough for elf ears. The comment earned him a scolding look from both his father and grandfather and Eldarion flinched so hard that he felt like he would fold up like a pill bug. To his surprise, Elrond burst out laughing.
"A merry band of Kinslayers are we!"
"He was already dead," Eldarion repeated, looking around at the tall and terrible faces, "does that mean he comes back here?"
"Only Namo can decide who becomes reimbodied and when. Without his Power, our spirits will go unhoused, and should Curufinwe succeed in his darkest plans, we will die forever." Maedhros looked to his brother with the authority of the eldest sibling.
"That wouldn't be right." Eldarion agreed.
"Life or death?" Maedhros looked forward to where his uncle had stopped behind his men and was looking back in curiosity as he overheard the conversation. Fingolfin seemed like a shell of himself, translucent like ice upon the sea, the scars of Morgoth's boot print shredding half of his noble features. He wondered why he had been made ready to leave first and whether his uncle really did need more time in these halls before he was released.
"There are cells in the upper floors which we have been unable to reach," Miriel said after walking on for what felt like hours, always moving upwards, the quick stamp of dwarven boots to their left and right. "I believe that the Ambarussa are being kept there, as well as others, but many will not have the strength or the will to leave."
"Erenion?" Elrond asked her, speaking the name at the back of his mind since this calamity began.
"This was a place of healing once," she answered, her stern face pale in her own luminosity, "Those who reform are re-embodied to join Valinorian society. But what of the hopeless and the incurable? Those twisted by The Dark Enemy into forgetting the warmth of their own secret fire? Should they be punished by a timelessness of solitude stretching on to the end of Ea without even the hope of death? The Valar are wise in many things, but they do not know fear, and they do not know silence, which may come as mercy when the music turns to noise." She turned to Eldarion, "Tell me, princeling, is it just?"
Eldarion looked to his father for an answer, but Aragorn only cocked his head and raised his eyebrows, curious how his son would answer.
"I don't think so," he answered sheepishly, "but I don't know." He took comfort in the touch of Aragorn's hand on his back.
"And would you not feel anger if that was your fate?"
Eldarion looked up at his father and imagined that he was Finwë.
They walked on in silence. The rough stone of the lower levels became smooth, and the corridors widened so that the dwarven warriors streaming past them on both sides could break into a run; there seemed to be an endless number of them. Soon, they heard the sound of distant war drums and the din of battle. The ground shook, and they could again smell the reek of The Necromancer's rotting horde.
"We're almost at the surface!" Caranthir repeated what one of the dwarves had told him.
"Stay beside me," Aragorn laid a protective hand on Eldarion's shoulder, "We need to get to the throne room; don't get caught in the fighting." He drew his shining Gondolindrim sword as there was a sound of dwarvish battle cries and the clash of fighting from ahead of them. He did not ask his son to return Anduril, for he saw, with some measure of pride, that Eldarion had become comfortable with the weapon.
The going was slow as every stinking enemy the dwarves hewed down was crushed to a pulp under their boots. The air became nearly unbreathable, and Eldarion clutched his father's mail-covered arm as he choked, and his boots slid in the mess.
"We're almost there," Aragorn promised. In the next moment, his words were proven prescient when a wall ahead of them, where the dwarves eagerly marched after their prey, folded inward with a BOOM and a great burst of light. They were all showered in falling debris.
Eldarion recovered from the shock. Momentarily deafened to Finrod's voice as he helped him stand. He shook off the rubble and looked for his father as the dust cleared. He shook his head to dispel the ringing in his ears, finding that he had been thrown against the far wall.
Wind, rain, and the din of clashing armies poured into the dark corridor as he staggered to his feet, picking up the sword he felt under his hand. He stumbled up to where Aragorn was looking out of the opening.
"Ai Eru." He gasped, gazing out across the fields below where the dead were beginning to overwhelm the even ranks of Noldorin infantry. The dead rained down from the ramparts above them, cracking on the ground and stumbling to their feet as they ran in mindless hunger across the battlefield. Putrid swirls of toxic gasses hovered low over the ground. The elvish forces had pushed through in one place, and they could see colossal siege towers, in design not unlike the towers of Gondolin, spilling armed warriors onto the ramparts to meet the onslaught with skillfully weilded steel.
But what had pulled his attention and made Maedhros cry out in dismay and clutch his hair, was the dragon. Pallando-Virne's form was fearsome and dark as he coiled and shifted like a great cat preparing to pounce upon its prey. His wings were dark with oily iridescence, and his body was textured with spiked scales.
Fingon the Valiant faced him with his blades raised. He stood upon the corpse of a fallen mountain troll. Pallando swerved, feinted, and lunged with a snap of his flame-licked jaws. The elf sprang aside and lashed out at his unmarred eye, slashing his dagger across it and spraying himself with hissing drops of blood. The blinded beast shrieked and vomited forth a river of blue flame, which Fingon barely avoided as he threw himself into the dirt. The jaws came down at him, snapping for the scent of elf in drooling hunger as he dodged this way and that, choking on the fumes.
"No!" Aragorn felt motion at his side, and in a streak of red and silver, Maedhros leaped over the edge without stopping to look. He slid down the cone of rubble left from the explosion which had opened the wall, tumbling and scrambling for his feet as he ripped his sword from his sheath and hit the oncoming dead in fury born of fierce love and terror. A wave of battle- hungry dwarves followed him. Fingolfin watched in disbelief momentarily as he beheld his son, whom he had not seen in two ages of timeless dark.
But Pallando-Virne, blinded and enraged, had managed to sniff out his prize. Fingon screamed as the great jaws closed and teeth as long as daggers sank into his thigh in a spray of blood. He gripped his sword, and as dragon fire blackened his mail, he drove the blade upward with all his strength and into the soft spot in the back of its throat. The dragon snapped its head and tossed the elf into the oncoming horde, where he rolled until he lay unmoving under the blanket of poison gasses with his golden ribbons in the mud.
It seemed that the battle paused for a moment, and everyone held their breath, but he did not rise. Elrond made a strangled sound of horror.
"Findecáno!" Fingolfin's scream of rage and grief for his son echoed over the beat of drums, and all those who had known him and served under him as their liege were set to a savage fire at the hearing of it. A battle cry went up from all corners, and, in a wave of silver bright vengeance, his Noldorin warriors spilled forth from the breach behind their king.
Eldarion stepped forward as if he would follow, but his father held him back. "We must get to the throne room," Aragorn reminded him, but Eldarion was fixed in awe and horror as he watched the battle unfold.
Pallando-virne shook his head and cracked the sword in his teeth as blood sprayed from his jaws. He was blinded and wounded but dangerous in his rage. The horde had not been blind to the newcomers, and their numbers seemed inexhaustible as they came in wave after wave of tireless undead. Maedhros was a whirlwind of slaughter as he forced his path toward where his cousin lay.
The dragon turned on him, shrieked a wet rattle, and inhaled to spray the ground with flames. By now, a dozen warriors were upon him, shooting him with golden arrows that bloomed from his throat and belly. Pallando-Virne whipped his tail in a great arc, throwing down the attacking elves like flies.
"Show your true face, demon!" Fingolfin was upon him in a flash, his sword striking to make a killing blow on the creature's exposed belly. But Pallando, the shapeshifter, the dream sculptor of Lorien was wily, and even hurt and overwhelmed. He could change his form into a tentacled mass of madness and chaos. Ringil swept out and cut through the darkness in an arc. Pallando cried out and fell onto his backside as he snapped back into his mannish form, blood streaming from his mouth. It took only one more strike to end him and he fell into the toxic mud of his own making, bloodstained blue robes billowing around him where he lay in the muck.
In his peripheral, Fingolfin saw Maedhros lifting his son's body out of the choking fumes as the dwarves around him pushed back the dead. Fingon's braids fell over his arm, and his bloodied hand hung limp as he was cradled. Maedros looked at him with desperation, willing him to speak.
"He needs a healer!" Aragorn said, looking expectantly at his father. Elrond was watching Maedhros pass his cousin's lifeless body to his uncle as the tears came. Fingolfin knelt in the mud, clutching his son, oblivious to the dwarven fighters who swept past him as he screamed out his grief.
Elrond shook his head. "Get to the throne room!" he urged, looking to Finrod and Glorfindel, who stood behind Eldarion, itching to leap into the fray and avenge their friend, "guard him," Elrond ordered. He looked down to the clearing battlefield and saw many fallen warriors who would die without aid, "There are many who I may be able to help." He confessed, then turned to his grandson, holding him by the shoulders and memorizing the shape of his face to bear in his heart forever, "I am proud of you. You are the image of my brother." He said, laying a kiss on Eldarion's cheekbone on the only bit of exposed skin. Without saying another word, he followed the others down the rubble, sprinting towards the bright beacon of Maedhros' hair. He was being encircled by knights dressed in red and silver.
"The slayer shall be slain," Finrod said darkly. There was an ancient anger in his eyes as he led them in pursuit of the dwarves who had continued up the passageway.