~DRUEDAIN FOREST~
The storm had lightened, and now the fall of rain had turned to dappled, golden luminosity all around them. A riot of birds sang in discordant squawks and trills from the branches. Vines seemed to grow fast enough to be seen by the naked eye as they unfurled their fascinated leaves in the sparking air. Flowers opened a hundredfold in the grasses, and insects swarmed.
"You've lived here all your life?" Eldarion asked, deciding that it would be wise to learn as much as possible about this woman before she inevitably murdered him.
"Yes." Hannë's platinum braids hung down her back in wet ropes as she lightly wound her way through the steadily rising canyons. They were on a ledge now, with a crevasse on one side and the sheltering canopies keeping back all but the heaviest of raindrops above them like a row of hands above the dancers at his mother's court balls. The water had stained dark streaks on the pale stone, and the ferns bobbed their unfurling fiddleheads under the steady rain. Thunder rolled in the dark sky above.
"So…" Eldarion used a tree root to brace himself on a narrow part of the path, and it seemed to him that it stretched out to make a better handhold for him to grasp. "Do you have any family?"
"Yes," She glared back at him, "you are going to help my grandmother!"
"Right." Eldarion cringed, wiping his hair from his eyes and leaving streaks of brown.
"What is wrong with her?" He asked and his feet slid a few inches on the mud, he overcompensated and fell into the clay bank, getting red mud all down his already tattered clothing.
"She is sick." Hallë insisted, looking upon his balance with a judgmental smirk.
"How much farther is it?" Eldarion dusted himself off, picked up the spear, and followed.
"Not too far."
"I'm not really much of a healer, you know," he confessed, "I've never been properly trained or anything beyond the basics. I just know a few songs."
"I heard your song, Alaman of Big Field." She insisted. The bank had started to recede, turning into a rooty ledge where spiders with abdomens like golden coins wove thick funnel-shaped webs. The trees that loomed above them were denser and taller than any Eldarion had seen, and swarms of gleaming insects hovered in their dark leaves.
"Have you heard a song like that before?" Eldarion asked, his curiosity growing as they climbed out of the canyon and started through the clustering ranks of towering pines. Who was this strange woman?
"Grandmother says a healer used to come who sang a song like that. Taught her how to sing it. But now her sickness has taken her voice. Evil things come into the forest." She stopped beyond a thick rosemary bush, looking down with a frown.
At her feet, there lay the shape of a man. He wore black dyed leather and lay on his back. But his flesh had turned to a cracked and desiccated husk, his mouth fixed forever upward in a silent scream. He bore the crest of three gears on a buckle at his shoulder. Mushrooms grew in a ring around his body, poking their way above the pine straw.
"That's one of Herugrim's men," Eldarion said out loud, momentarily forgetting his act.
"They came through the forest last night," Hanne explained. "This one got too close."
"They are the ones who took my friend," Eldarion told her, searching her face to try and discern her true will.
"Then perhaps he has met the same fate as they." She said coolly, studying him suspiciously.
"Do you know what kind of power this is?" Eldarion crouched, observing the body with mild disgust. It lay undisturbed by any animal who might have eaten of its flesh. The buckles on his kit gleamed under drops of rain.
"My grandmother has long protected the forest. She protects the Rúatani from dark beasts, evil trees, and evil men." She said by way of explanation, locking her green eyes onto the prince as if weighing whether he was one of the later, "But after last night, she is weak, she is very sick from fighting."
"Your grandmother did this?" he asked incredulously, thinking of his own grandmother.
"Yes, and she can help us too," Hannë insisted from atop a boulder, "She can help us find your friend!" She offered Eldarion a hand up with a good-natured smile.
Eldarion took the opportunity to look around. Here, the pines broke where an ancient rockfall had cleared the mountainside, and he could see the lofty thunderheads making their way down the valley illuminated by afternoon light. A sense of dread settled deep within him as if somewhere up in the sun-bright heavens, a star had gone dark forever.
He wondered where Elfwine had been taken, and if he could ever forgive himself if the worst were to happen. He had been coerced into friendship with the boy since they were both children, as the Scions of the two main political entities in that part of Middle Earth, they were expected to get along. And now he feared that he had abandoned his friend.
But then, just as he was considering making a run for it, he espied a light flickering atop a peak amidst the wind-tossed canopies below him.
"Merry survived!" he whispered.
~FORMENOS~
"I TOLD YOU I had NOTHING to do with this SACRELIGE!" Carnthir nearly spat. His last fraying hold on his self-control was the only thing keeping him from laying hands on his own mother. The firelight from the huge stone hearth at the end of the hall cast them all into writhing chiaroscuro. They had seen the star fall into the distant mountains from the windows as the storm passed, as had all of Arda. And a few minutes later, the dark-haired fourth son of Fëanor had come dashing sown from his observatory to find his mother warming herself before the fire in the great hall.
"We would understand," Maedhros insisted, leaning heavily against the mantlepiece, "None of us had real resolution and…" his placating tone made a vein throb in his brother's neck and Caranthir's fists locked in by his sides.
"Do you see the stone in my hand, brother!" Caranthir nearly screeched, showing them his empty palms. "What good would it do to call down the wrath of all of Arda on my head?" He rolled his eyes dramatically as if he thought his brother was an idiot. "I had nothing to do with this, but maybe we should figure out who did instead of casting suspicion on each other?"
"It wouldn't be the first time you used deception to cover your impulsivity."
"IMPULSIVITY!" he exploded, kicking at the coals and sending them scattering across the stone floor, "This was obviously a planned attack!"
"How do you think?" Maedhros looked at him, and the firelight shone in his grey eyes.
The twins watched the three of them from the windowsill, unsure whose side to take. Four out of what had once been seven brothers had been liberated from Mandos ah the Breaking to keep their ancestral home in these freezing northern climes. Celegorm and Curufin had been banished to the same void that had taken their father and grandfather, from whence the only way out was to be born again as a mortal at the time and circumstance of the Doomlord's whim. No one knew what had happened to Maglor.
"I…" he looked around at his family in embarrassment. "I have nightly marked the wanderings of the star-ship for nigh on these past years since our liberation." Nerdanel cocked her head in disappointment, "I confess, my mind is ever drawn to the light of the star, where none may seize or spoil it… I would not blot it from the sky. No necklace could make a better setting than a cradle of stars. I would not take it." He pleaded, folding his arms across his chest, the rich brocade of his winter robes bunching up. "believe me."
"What did you notice, Morifinwë?" his mother asked softly, always gentle with his explosive moods.
"The ship is moored in daylight," he explained, "It is said that the Mariner and his Lady keep a tower upon the edges of the sea, North of Alqualondë. It is there that someone would have had to go to slip aboard and turn the ship into the mountainside."
"Whoever that is has committed a crime against all of Arda!" Amras spoke up, finally understanding enough to take a side.
"We must find them!" Amrod leaped to his feet beside his twin. "We must go to where the ship crashed and see if they left any evidence!"
"Wait!" Maedhros held up his hands and closed his eyes.
"Would you sit idly by?" Caranthir rounded on his elder brother, the twins coming up on either side of him looking determined. "The beacon for hope and light for all the world is put out, and you would do nothing?"
"You know that's not why you want to go." Maedros snapped in a rare flash of temper. "You think that you can take it for yourself, is that right?"
"We must discover the fate of the Mariner." Caranthir insisted.
"No," Maedhros said, "were not, were not doing this." He turned away from the fire, pacing to where the snow swirled in the chilly night that should have been springtime.
"Coward." Caranthir hissed at his receding back.
"If we go out there," Maedhros stalked back until he was directly in his younger – and somewhat shorter brother's face, "They will see us as coming to claim it. We are being manipulated into violence; can you not see it?"
"I do see it but the fact remains, brother, I am the only one who was charting the movement of the ship, I am the only one who saw." Caranthir insisted, and they knew that he was not boasting. Over the past five years, he had been diligently gathering the most advanced telescopes and cartography equipment to be made in Valinor, and the highest tower of the ancient castle had been converted into the best observatory in Arda. "Listen to me; we have to get to Tirion before war breaks out between the hosts. I know what I saw: someone hijacked Vingilot."
"Who?" Nerdanel put out one hand to still her eldest's ire, "Tell us, Carnistir."
"A maia."
~EASTMENET~
The camp of the Rohirrim was made atop the East Wall, in a place where, in times of clearer weather, you could see the gleaming waters of the Nen Hithoel and the distant shapes of the back of the Argonath. It was a place specified by the kidnapper's letter just at the edge of the rocky, wooded hills in which Lord Herugrim was hiding.
Rain drummed down on the roof of the tent like the hooves of ten thousand wild horses. The water had stained the canvas dark, and the warmth of the lamps made the air inside thick and humid. Eomer's hair was sticking to his neck as he gazed coldly at the man before him.
The messenger had arrived under a flag of parlay, bearing aloft a banner decorated with the three gears of Lord Herugrim. Two of Eomer's lieutenants stood just inside the door, looming menacingly over the damp messenger. Sir Reinard, Warden of the Stonedans, let his bushy red hair go wild beneath the edge of his helm, and Sir Frithbert, captain of the king's personal guard, gazed down his long nose as the newcomer bowed and introduced himself in an act of shallow gentility.
"I do not see my son, Wigbald of Feidburg." Eomer addressed him from a folded saddle blanket between two fluttering lamps, his hands on his knees. He almost suppressed the tremor of rage in his voice.
"I have seen the boy only this morning," Wigbald unsuccessfully attempted to ease the tension with a smile. "He weeps to see his home again, a most trying sight. I would dearly like to facilitate the return of the child to his home."
"Where are you keeping him?" Eomer's hands clutched his knees.
"Somewhere safe," Wigbald's smile unfurled in a sinister sneer as a fresh gust of wind snapped the canvas. Eomer closed his eyes, and for a moment, he indulged himself in a lurid fantasy of putting his thumbs through the messenger's eyeballs. He was sure that wherever his son was being held, it was certainly not safe. His sweet little boy who would never let anyone else do a job if he could do it himself, who wove chains of buttercups into his horse's mane, and who could eat a whole chicken in a sitting… Eomer blinked away his emotions and spoke in kingly measure.
"I imagine that your master wants something in exchange for his safe return?" Eomer's heart clenched; he would lightly give up his kingdom and half of Arda for his son's life, but he had a kingdom to mind, and he would not throw his people into chaos if he could find another way. He longed to do to this wretched servant of the White Hand what he should have done many years ago when the traitor had gone into exile.
"Lord Herugrim wants full restoration of his ancestral lands. They were unjustly taken from him after the war."
"And what then?" Eomer laughed coldly, "Are we to live as neighbors when you have threatened my son's life?"
"The boy stays with us, and he will live for as long as we have your cooperation." Wigbald blinked and smiled benignly.
"That is unacceptable." The king growled.
"You are welcome to make an assault upon my lord's encampment, but the child will die when the first arrow is nocked." He stuck out his lip in performative sadness. "If you want to see him again, there is a certain polearm of a unique design with very delicate etching upon the blade in hand, both like a dwarf and an elf. It is kept in the treasuries of Meduseld, Lord Herugrim considers it part of his inheritance, and a symbol of his house, bring this polearm to this place and you may see your son alive again."
Eomer looked up, for a moment he was bewildered, and then he realized the significance of what the slimy man had said – Eldarion must have gotten away.
"Then we are agreed," Eomer's blue eyes blazed with quiet fire, "I will bring you the spear of Celebrant." And, he thought to himself, the armies of the one who wields it.
~LÓRIEN~
It was not darkness but a grey veil pulled before her senses. It was not silence but the long holding of a breath without hope for another. It was not cold, but a stillness laid upon the minutest particles of her breath, a dampness that crept into the lungs. It was not death but fading. So easy to become nothing, to forget oneself amidst the sorrows in the garden of dreams. She knelt, robed in white, upon the ornamented flagstones beside a pool. All around her, spring flowers hung, broken by the frost.
"My lady?" Artanis startled as she never had before, she felt the weight of snowflakes settling on her hands, the caress of silk on her cheeks. The ache within her as vast as the sea. The garden was dying, and the light of hope had gone dark in the heavens.
"Yes, Trillabou?" she asked the maia, who had obviously been sent to encourage her to come inside the shelter. It had never snowed before in Lórien, and although the elves and maiar who dwelled in the gardens did their best to make light of the strange weather, they had all felt the Star go dark. The ringing of the bells on Trillabou's garments seemed discordantly jolly in the stillness where the singing used to be.
"I have a blanket," they explained, "it's a bit cold. Don't you think." they placed the blanket around Artanis' shoulders and sat beside her.
"I have always liked the cold," Artanis confessed with a smirk, "it feels good on the burns."
"The gardens are not what they were," Melian's voice came from her other side as she approached the two of them on silent feet, "it is as if the song of spring went silent. The earth trembles as if the stones themselves were weeping." She sat on the flagstones and studied Galadriel with pity.
"When the outer eye is shut, the inner may open," Melian smelled perpetually of chamomile, "You are healing." She observed, "How are your eyes?"
"All is shades of grey," Artanis whispered, feeling Melian's hands take one of her own. "I miss the starlight." She paused for a moment, "Is the sky clouded? Can you see the stars?"
"Aye," the Maia lied, for the sky was overcast.
"And see you, the star of hope?"
"Aye," Melian answered, looking upon her with love overflowing, and she did not speak a falsehood.