~VALIMAR~
"What happened?" Eärwen's panicked voice came from outside the tent, pulling Finrod's eyes from where they had been counting his sister's shallow breaths.
"My lady…" Glorfindel sounded apologetic, but he knew very well how she had publicly expressed her disdain for the Peredhel Governor of Tirion and did not want to risk her interrupting Elrond's healing practice.
"You will let me through this instant!" The queen of Alqualondë snapped.
Finrod, his father, Elrond, and their patient occupied the tent's cramped space. On the far side of the cot, Elrond was deep in trance, his lips shaping unvoiced syllables of his art. Finarfin looked up in dismay when he heard his wife's voice; he sat beside his daughter, stained robes pooling on the carpeted ground, holding one bandaged hand in his own. Finrod stood, deciding that it was his place to rein in his mother's wrath. He ducked outside the tent into the night, where an overwhelmed-looking Glorfindel was weighing up the consequences of physically restraining the queen of the Teleri.
Eärwen's mane of white curls was wild in the cooling breeze, and her clothing seemed to shift and glimmer like the sea. She was accompanied by two white-haired marines in fish scale mail with curved knives in their belts.
"Ingoldo." She recognized her son as he stepped around a relieved Glorfindel, "What has become of her?" she demanded, "I heard terrible things. Let me by."
"Amil," Finrod embraced her as she tried to pass him, suddenly overwhelmed by emotion.
"Ingoldo?" she studied her son's face, torn with grief as he struggled to find words, "what have they done!" she hissed, a fit of ancient anger surging up within her. Eärwen tossed aside her son's hands, forcing her way past him and into the tent.
She froze as she laid her eyes upon her daughter. Studying the bandages that covered her eyes, the edges of pink burns around the gauze. Her husband bent low over her hand, and Elrond Peredhel sitting on the other side, deep in an insensate trance.
"You!" she hissed as Finrod followed her into the tent, "What have you done?"
"Eärwen!" Finarfin was on his feet, blocking her path to strangle the healer with an embrace, "He's trying to help her."
"Help?" she struggled to push him away, finding Finrod's hands on her shoulders.
"We are still trying to understand what happened, Amil." He squeezed his hands comfortingly, but that only seemed to churn her wrath.
"It was he who welcomed the kinslayers to our home." She pointed at Elrond, "No one else would have done this!"
"We still don't know who is to blame, Ami!" Finrod insisted, looking to his father for help but finding only doubt in Finarfin's expression.
"I have expressed my concerns about the re-embodied," he could not hide his glance to Elrond, "You should be taking heightened security measures, Findaráto."
"I?" Finrod gestured at his chest, "Have no evidence that they were involved, Atar."
"The Spring seed grain does not simply ignite without spark!" Eärwen said in support of her husband.
"Wait!" a new voice interrupted them, and they all turned to see that Elrond had opened his eyes and was leaning close to one of Galadriel's ears. "Artanis, can you hear me?" he asked and was answered with a soft moan of discomfort.
Eärwen rushed to her daughter's side, taking her hand and looking at the Perehel with wondrous trepidation.
"Ami?" Galadriel's strong voice was a whisper, and her lips were cracked and bleeding. "I can't see!" she gasped in panic, trying to move and feeling her scorched skin rub against the cotton gauze.
"Shh, Drink," Elrond urged her, pressing a goblet of medicine to her lips as she gasped and shuddered in pain, "Your vision will return ere long." He reassured her as one bandaged hand groped for her face.
"Ai' Eru," she gasped, finding that there was no way to move herself to alleviate the pain. "Ama?"
"I am here, Artanis." Eärwen resisted the urge to hold her daughter as she watched her cringe at the taste of the medicine and sink into the sheets, her breath coming in shuddering gasps. They all waited with their breath held as she slipped into a medicated sleep, her mother's hand clutched in her own until her fingernails cut her skin.
"Perhaps we should continue this conversation outside." Elrond stood and gestured the rest of them towards the door.
"I would stay with her." Eärwen declared, earning a nod of respect as the men went outside. The cool spring night was eerily silent as if even the crickets had stopped their springtime frivolities. For a long moment, they just stood and gazed helplessly into the fire.
"I should return to Tirion," Elrond leaned heavily on Finrod, who guided him to a fire set up between the remaining tents, "She will heal better in the presence of her parents, and I would tell Celebrian, though it grieves me to lie this burden on her heart." He rested his elbows on his knees and sighed deeply.
"There you are, my lords!" Olórin seemed to glow in the night as he passed through the trees towards them.
"What have you learned?" Elrond asked, taking a goblet of miruvor from Glorfindel and watching the maia approach the far side of the fire. The orange light played upon his features.
"My lords," he bowed to Finarfin, "I have been to the demolished granary." They all looked up in interest, "It seems to have been consumed in a rapid conflagration."
"And?" Finarfin urged. Pacing beyond the fire without sitting down.
"Any sign of an arsonist?" Elrond passed one hand across his weary brow.
"I believe that the grain ignited spontaneously, of its own internal heat," Olórin explained calmly. Pressing down the luscious curls of his snow-white beard into his belly and frowning into the fire.
"That is absurd." Finarfin objected.
"No…" Elrond took a long drink of the cordial, cringing as the taste was unusually bitter in his mouth. "It has been known to happen, but never before under the gaze of the Powers.
"Then has the grace of the Goddess left my people?" Finarfin objected, looking at the Maia in horror. "Is she displeased with us?"
"No," Olórin raised his hand, "it is not the Quendi who have earned her wrath, I don't think. Although there is one, I would first ask to know for sure." He stroked his beard thoughtfully.
"You believe this to be a marriage dispute?" Elrond nearly laughed.
"The toiling of the Dwarves of Mandos is a great undertaking indeed. Perhaps the fruit giver has not abandoned us; rather, she has been abandoned."
"You think this is a marriage dispute?" Finarfinrepeated, narrowing his blue eyes.
"Someone must go to Mandos and see if the risen Dwarrowfolk know the will of their lord." Olorin shrugged.
"And meanwhile?" Finrod interjected.
"The people must be convinced that this is not the work of reimbodied kinslayers," Olórin addressed him earnestly, turning his eyes to Elrond, "the peace of Aman must be maintained at all costs."
~ANORIEN~
"My people call this land Anorien," Eldarion explained to the small man, "the city where I was born is away past yonder peak." He gestured vaguely southwest.
Zhan grunted, "Zhan has seen white houses from Brother Ghan's home." He nodded sagely, "And what name do Sea Giants call forest and mountain?"
"Only the name of your brother's people," Eldarion pointed upwards towards the peaks, "there are Beacons; this one is called Erelas, and that is Nardol."
"Sea giants climb peaks and know nothing of valley." Zhan laughed, the soft blue pattern of his tattoos wrinkling at his temples. It was dawn on the third day of travel, and they were making good time as they crossed the forested lowlands at the feet of the mountains. Zhan seemed to think they would arrive by sunset at their destination, a Druedain settlement high in the forested foothills. The sloping highway had turned into a well-maintained plank road navigating itself through boggy groves of cypress and swamp oak adorned with garments of tattered moss.
High above them, unnamed rivers poured the springtime snow melt down the sides of the mountains where the forest turned to towering pine woods, a deeper shade of green against the pinkish grey of the mountains. Zhan raised one hand, and Eldarion stopped; the whole company did likewise behind him.
"What is it?" Eldarion glanced back at Elfwine and Merry, who rode with the cart. Looking around, he could see nothing but the boggy forest extending in every direction; the rising sun was growing hot above the canopy.
"This way," Zhan said, clicking his tongue to tell his mount to step to the right of the raised causeway. Her hooves splashed in the water, and for a moment, Eldarion was confused, but to his wonder, there was a rock-hard pathway just beneath the water's surface. Mira snorted in distrust as Eldarion nudged her forward with a firm Sindarin command. She lowered her head and followed the Druedain horse suspiciously. Before them, it seemed as if the trees shifted their roots, and in a few dozen cubits, the patterned paving stones of an ancient path emerged between the twisting roots.
"Easy," Elfwine said, and Eldarion looked back to where he, Merry, and two of his riders were urging poor Brinna down off the road.
"Are you sure this is the way?" Elfwine asked, looking up into the twisting branches and clawing his sweaty blonde hair back from his forehead.
"There's a road." Eldarion pointed, "You can't see it from the path. He looked the nervous mule in the eye and encouraged her with a word of elvish. With careful jostling, they got the cart and all nine riders onto the new path and continued their journey deeper into the forest.
The road seemed to go straight for a long time. Glancing over their shoulders, they could see the trees moving and shifting behind them. Somewhere far above, the sun was shining, but as they journeyed deeper and deeper into the cover of the towering trees, the sun's angle became obscured, and Eldarion started to wonder whether trusting the strange man had been a good idea. When he looked behind him for the third time, the eyes of the statue in the cart seemed to glow with their own inner light. Everywhere the forest was alight with the buzz of life, butterflies and swarms of glimmering gnats danced around the statue as she passed like supplicants coming to witness a procession. The birds shrieked and clamored high above them, and flowers seemed to burst into bloom in the grass at their feet.
Every now and then, Eldarion thought he caught a glimpse of a boulder that seemed to breathe or bright eyes peering from the shadow of a rocky crevice.
"The Goddess is pleased that we have returned her to her people," Zhan told Eldarion with a smirk. A shudder went down Eldarion's neck, and he was reassured by the weight of the spear against his leg.
"These woods are small piece of what once was great forest, covered all lands when world was young. Then did Mata Vonn dance upon a mountain in spring with Oll, and we had good dreams in long night."
The path reached a forest river, deep and foaming white as it roared in a thundering cacophony through mossy boulders. On either side of the stream, they could see the remains of a decrepit stone bridge, now an empty gap exposed twelve cubits of sky above the angry water. The Cyprus groves had given way to a dense pine forest decorated with spring ferns and boulders the height of three mounted men between which the river thundered and sprayed.
"I could jump it," Elfwine boasted with a laugh, standing up in his stirrups.
Eldarion cocked his head, "what do you think, Mira?" he asked, leaning forward. His horse whinnied in a challenge.
"I think your fathers would have my head." Merry objected as he came up behind them on the cart.
"Pale waters lead to House of Ghan." Before hopping down from his pony, Zhan explained, "Here we walk."
"Right," Eldarion looked back at Elfwine and Merry, and all three of their eyes fell on the statue in the back of the cart, which seemed to be radiating feral energy through its blank blue gaze. "She is a gift from your people, after all." Eldarion gestured to indicate that the prince of Rohan should be the one to carry the idol.
"What are you afraid of, a statue?" Elfwine asked nervously, turning away from Zhan and silently cursing his friend.
"How much further is there to go?" Eldarion asked Zhan, frowning upward beneath the shade of his hand and trying to guess the time.
"We climb many stairs beside Palewater." Zhan looked between them, raising his voice so that it seemed to harmonize with the sound of thundering water. He raised one stubby hand, stained a solid shade of blue, and decorated it with rings of crude copper. "Leave beasts. They are well watched."
"Herulaf, Carling, Aldor," Elfwine dropped to the ground, giving his horse a nervous pat on the neck. At the last minute, Eldarion decided that it would be foolish to go unarmed into the forest, so he took the spear from its place on the saddle and secured it across his shoulders in a clever hauberk of Rohirric style.
"Watch the horses," Elfwine ordered, taking the bag from his saddle and swinging it over his shoulder, "the rest of you, with me." He straightened his mouth and regarded the statue; it was not that it was heavy. It was that he felt as if it was watching him in a way that made his skin crawl. In the end, it resulted in turning it so that the eyes pointed away from him and wrapping it respectfully in one of the green and gold banners that his escort carried with them on their polearms.
They began their ascent in single file, following a path that seemed to materialize between the water-worn canyons under the dappled light. Zhan went first, often seeming to disappear into the stones; behind him, Eldarion gleefully clambered up the rocks with the agility of a wood elf. Behind him, Elfwine trudged along, aided by a sure-footed Merry, his three remaining riders, and Brinna stubbornly following behind.