Aiër

by emon14

Shëanon embarks on a quest that will change her life forever and must come to terms with her heritage, her abilities, and the desires of her heart. Tenth Walker. Legolas/OC

34. Chapter 29

Aiër Chapter 28

The Dimholt road was tenebrous and terrible. The sides of the cliff on either side of them rose straight into the air so high and so close together that they could scarcely see the sky above. Only a narrow strip high over their heads was visible, distinguishable from the black of the mountain by a faint spray of stars, and even these were mostly obscured from them by the sinister pine trees that grew all around. Their limbs were sickly—barren in places so that the bare branches and twigs could be seen in the night like grasping, skeletal arms reaching for them as they passed, their crude, sharp fingers outstretched. Watchful and ominous they were, with their dry, dead needles littering the ground, and Shëanon was astonished to find she did not like these trees at all. Unlike were they to the lovely mellyrn of Lothlórien or the waking trees of Fangorn Forest, and she had no desire to touch their bark and feel their spirits.

Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli were silent, and even the horses were unsettled. Hasufel's ears swiveled constantly to and fro, as though he, like she, was anxiously listening for any sound to be heard. Shëanon stroked his mane as much to comfort him as herself, for she was unnerved and ill at ease in the darkness. Indeed, she almost wished that it were as before, when she had still ridden with Aragorn on his horse behind him, for she found she did not at all like to ride through the gloom alone. A chill kept racing down her spine, and she felt that every instinct she had was warning her to turn back.

On through the night they journeyed, and she knew they would not stop to rest. As Aragorn had said, they were already racing against time and had none to spare. The road was not wide enough to ride side-by-side, so she and Hasufel followed Aragorn and Brego; she squinted through the dense dark at the back of his head, even as she could feel Legolas's gaze upon hers.

Finally, after what seemed an age, Gimli broke the silence and spoke.

"I know nothing of this road, nor to what end we ride," he whispered, from the very back of the group. "Only that it is perilous."

"Indeed," Aragorn agreed. For a moment Shëanon was amazed by how calm he sounded, as though the haunting malevolence all around did not touch him. "You threw in your lot with mine and bound yourself to my fate without first discovering what it would be."

"It didn't matter one way or another," said Gimli stubbornly. "No fate or foe could have dissuaded me, but now I think I should know what dangers we will face. Why do they call it the Paths of the Dead, and why must we walk them?"

"We will try to bring them to Minas Tirith," Shëanon whispered, shuddering. "Won't we?"

Indeed, the moment her father had spoken of Aragorn's fate, she had known. She was not well versed in the history, but she remembered that there was a ghostly army, accursed and treacherous, that had been condemned to linger in the mountains by Isildur, and could be commanded only by the king of Gondor. Elrond had given to Aragorn the re-forged shards of Narsil, and their path was called the Paths of the Dead... Surely this undead army waited at its end. The Rohirrim had not mustered enough men, Aragorn had told them; she suspected her father had advised him to make up the difference with the ghosts.

"Them?" Gimli asked cautiously.

"The Army of the Dead," said Legolas, speaking for the first time.

"Long ago," Aragorn murmured, "the men of these mountains swore an oath of fealty to the last king of Gondor. They gave their word to fight against Sauron and his host, and Isildur bound them to it. The time came when he invoked their pledge and called upon them at great need, and yet they did not come. For their faithlessness, Isildur cursed them, never to rest until their oath had been fulfilled."

In the darkness, Shëanon heard Gimli release a puff of air.

"An army of undead traitors?" he asked. "They sound more likely to harm us than help us."

"I am Isildur's heir," Aragorn sighed, "and I have the power to lift the curse and release them."

"You think they'll want to fight and earn their freedom?" Shëanon asked nervously, looking at the tense set of his spine and shoulders ahead of her.

He did not answer for a moment.

"Let us hope they do."

As these words fell over the group there was a foreboding pause, and Shëanon bit her lip, hesitating. Even as they had first ridden from the encampment and into this lifeless gorge, a flicker of uncertainty had settled upon her, and she wondered if she should give it voice. Finally, after several more moments during which the only sound was the horses' hooves upon the rocky shale, she decided to hear what Aragorn would say.

"Lady Galadriel's message said…"

She trailed off, tentative, wishing she could see his face, but though she suspected he knew exactly where her thoughts had gone, he did not speak.

"She said, 'the hour draws near when the Dúnedain must come forth and walk the Paths of the Dead,'" Shëanon murmured. "My father told me that Elladan and Elrohir are riding with your people to Gondor, but they are not here… Do you think Lady Galadriel foresaw that they should be?"

"Yes," Legolas said plainly, when Aragorn did not reply.

Shëanon frowned, for she privately agreed. Surely Galadriel had foreseen in her mirror that her brothers with the Dúnedain would find them and join them on this errand—for why else would she have sent such a message to Aragorn? And yet they had not come in time…

"Then something has gone awry," she said. This thought disturbed her even more than the prospect of enlisting the help of the Dead.

Still Aragorn stayed silent for several more moments.

"One Dúnadan will have to be enough," he answered at last, and though he spoke with conviction, she could hear in his voice that he was as worried as she was.

"One Dúnadan, two Elves, and a Dwarf," Gimli corrected.

Shëanon shook her head, even though only Legolas could see it.

"Two Elves, a Dwarf, and the rightful King of Gondor," she whispered, eyeing the hilt of the sword at Aragorn's waist, which gleamed even in the darkness. "The Dead will fight for you, Aragorn. My father and Lady Galadriel would not have sent us this way if they did not believe it would serve us."

Through the darkness, she thought she saw Aragorn turn to glance back at her.

"Lord Elrond brought worse tidings than this dark road," he said quietly. "The danger for Minas Tirith is greater than we first knew. A fleet of Corsair ships has been mustered by the Enemy, and sent by way of the Anduin to attack the city."

Shëanon felt her stomach plummet, and Legolas and Gimli were silent for a long moment.

"How long do we have?" Legolas asked at last.

"Three days."

Three days…

Her fingers fisted in Hasufel's mane, her heartbeat fast. Earlier that night, she had said that awaiting the coming battle was like awaiting the battle at Helm's Deep. She had been wrong, for this was much worse. There was truly no help to be found, save for an army of ghosts who might as quickly kill them as join them. And now they learned that a legion of orcs was just the beginning?

Suddenly she realized, with a start, that a fleet of Corsair ships meant ships of Men. Her stomach gave another lurch, and she swallowed. These were not orcs or uruk-hai she would try to kill, but Men like Éomer and Théoden and the Rohirrim… Men like Aragorn… Mortal children of Eru, even as she had once believed herself to be… As her own mother or father must have been. An ill feeling gripped her at the thought of facing these Men in battle, and she closed her eyes for a moment, wondering what could possibly make anyone join willingly with Sauron and go to war against their own kind. Her heart felt weary and disturbed, and she said nothing.

The four of them continued on through the waning hours left of the night. Even as the dark sliver of sky overhead grew steadily lighter, the darkness down in the deep rift was hardly lessened, and Shëanon suspected it was well after dawn when they finally rode through a grey, watery light. Though she had not slept, she was not tired, for the unnatural menace of the mountain forbade any thoughts of sleep, and her mind was racing with all that had happened: fear for the fate of Minas Tirith and her friends who would fight there. Dread at the thought of the Corsair army. The daunting, horrible prospect of meeting with ghosts… Gandalf's warning that she must learn to control her powers, and the fact that she had still failed to do so… The vision that had come upon her so suddenly… And still she was reeling from seeing her father, and the terrible weight his words had laid on her. Worry for Arwen and for Elladan and Elrohir. The thought of never seeing any of them again.

Her lingering panic over the battle to come, and losing Aragorn or Gimli or… or Legolas.

Shëanon had not once turned to peer back at him as they had ridden through the night, for she had not forgotten that one glimpse of torment she had seen upon his face after he had spoken with Lord Elrond, and she was afraid that if she looked behind her into his eyes, she would see it again.

As their silence lengthened, her troubles seemed to weigh more and more heavily upon her, and she could sense that the same was true for each of her companions: that a shadow was upon each of their hearts.

When they had ridden for many long hours, the horses suddenly halted, and would not walk on no matter how they urged them. They had no choice but to dismount and lead them by their reins over the sharp grey gravel and crackling bed of pine needles. Hasufel was twitchy and shaking, and seemed to sense the same frightful energy that she could feel, like a current of malice in the air growing more powerful the farther they walked. Just when she began to wonder how much longer it would take—how much more terrible the awful anticipation and ominous fear would continue to grow before it found its peak, Aragorn finally stopped, halting ahead of them in the middle of the narrow path and gazing unmoving at something that they could not see.

Warily Shëanon peered around him, and she felt her face go white.

They had reached the end of their road at last, and were met with the sheer face of the mountain. There, in it, was a doorway.

All her hair stood on end, and goose bumps erupted all over her skin.

The door itself was little more than a hole carved out of the mountain, its frame hewn of solid rock, but beyond the threshold loomed what appeared to be a wall of utter blackness. It was, undeniably, a void, as though the sun itself had forsaken it, or indeed as though it would not suffer the sun to pass within, and moreover it seemed that the darkness crept over the threshold and seeped even into the day, so that the door appeared as a gaping, bleeding wound in the mountainside. Never had Shëanon seen such darkness, and a shudder of dread coursed through all her limbs. Etched above the door were markings that she could not read, for they were not written in tengwar or any writing system she had ever known, but her imagination conjured a hundred threatening meanings.

She shuddered again, grasping Hasufel's reins more tightly.

For a long moment none of them moved or spoke, and that's when she realized that she was freezing. It was as though some wintery chill were leaking out with the darkness and coiling around them, ensnaring and encircling, and breathing down their necks.

"The very warmth of my blood seems stolen away," Gimli whispered in the deep hush, and the terror of his words alarmed her even more than the sight of the doorway had; for she had known very little to move his heart to fear.

She glanced nervously at Aragorn; he looked as grim as he had when he'd left Théoden's tent, but he stood tall and straight, and for all his grimness there was no trace of fear upon him… or if there was, it was not a fear of ghosts.

"We must go on," he said firmly, and without looking away from the door. "If we abandon this path, we abandon all hope."

Turning, he seized a torch from among the gear tethered to Brego, and dug through his pack for a flint. Shëanon had to clutch Hasufel's bridle, now, for he was shivering with fright and kept trying to rear back, and Brego and Arod were dancing fretfully, too. Indeed, it seemed that only Legolas was calm. She kept looking at him; his face was severe, but he seemed little concerned with the striking cold or lightless shadow of the doorway. She thought again of the expression she'd seen after he had spoken with her father…

Then Hasufel lurched so violently and so suddenly that she almost lost hold of him. With a gasp she tugged him, rearing, back onto his forelegs, but he seemed seized by a sudden terror.

"Thala," she cried. "Thala! Dartho, mellon nín."

His eyes were wide and rolling, and even as she implored him to be still he pulled at the reins with all his might. Shëanon staggered and dug her heels into the gravel.

"I cannot calm him," she gasped, struggling not to let him go.

"We must go on," Aragorn repeated. "The horses must come."

But he was wrestling with Brego, who was almost as uneasy as Hasufel.

But Arod was still, for Legolas had laid his hand over the horse's eyes, and was whispering beside his ear in Sindarin. Shëanon looked up at Hasufel in frustration and consternation, for her own elvish words had seemed to have little effect.

"He can sense your fear," Legolas abruptly told her, as though he could hear her thoughts. He released Arod, who stood quivering but did not flee, and came to help her restrain Hasufel instead.

Shëanon watched as he caught the horse's bridle and stood in front of him, as though to block the doorway from his sight, and began, in a voice so soothing that it calmed her, too, to bid him be at ease. Standing beside Hasufel with his reins still clenched in her fist, she studied Legolas intently. The sight of his handsome face and bright, clear eyes was a startling contrast with the wasted trees and desolate mountainside, and indeed his fair Elven voice seemed to cut the dread of the Door in half. As he spoke, however, he glanced away from Hasufel and turned his gaze instead upon her, and she could tell at once that he was checking whether she might need steadying, too. Grimacing, she shook her head and tried to look less afraid.

She could enter into this mountain, could she not? She had endured the crushing crypt of Moria. She had stood firm upon the battlements of the Hornburg.

She could march into this abyss.

Legolas appraised her for a moment longer, his eyes dark. Still his regard was grave.

"Less fear I had for the Balrog than this doorway sets upon me," Gimli suddenly confessed beside them. "Even knew I nothing of this road, I would know that Death lies beyond this gate."

Shëanon looked around and saw that his ruddy face was white behind his beard and helm. She swallowed.

"We have looked Death in the face more than once," she reminded him, but with none of the confidence she had hoped to summon.

All of a sudden, Aragorn turned to them, and he looked more determined than she had ever seen him, his noble face bright as though with some inner fire that not even the creeping darkness could quell.

"I do not fear death," he swore, looking them each in the eye.

Then he bounded ahead through the doorway and into the darkness.

Shëanon started and ran after him at once, without thinking, even as the pervasive chill pierced her heart. All she knew was that she couldn't endure the thought of Aragorn venturing into such a place alone. She drew Hasufel's reins, and the trembling horse, despite his reluctance, followed in her wake.

They crossed the threshold.

The moment she set foot into the blackness beyond the Dark Door, Shëanon could feel it everywhere:

Death.

It was colder than a winter's night, and darker, and the very air itself was dank and icy in her lungs and stale in her mouth, like still, brackish water unsafe to drink—like poison. She could feel even in her bones some ancient, dire warning to flee for her very life, and suddenly she heard Boromir's voice in her ears, as she had when they had first entered Moria: this is a tomb.

But she thought this worse than a tomb, worse by far than the mound under which she had seen Théodred laid to rest and worse than the cavernous graveyard that were the mines, for here, she could feel, was not just death but unrest, not just danger but anger.

Not if all the hosts of Mordor stood here to assail me and that dark road were my only escape would I take it, Éomer had said. She had not quite believed him until that very moment, and she was suddenly, furiously glad that they had not heeded Aragorn's protests—that they had refused to forsake him, for how could anyone endure such a path by himself?

Shëanon hurried, blind and terrified and leading a reluctant Hasufel, along a narrow, rough tunnel, straining to see through the impenetrable gloom; no light at all came in behind them, and for a moment it was her worst nightmare. She could see nothing. The blackness was absolute. She was utterly helpless.

Then she rounded a bend and, to her immense relief, Aragorn was there with Brego, and he held his torch aloft. Its light was weak, as though somehow the surrounding darkness dampened or diminished it, but at least, with it, they could see. As she reached his side, he turned his head to look back at her, but Shëanon glanced ahead of him and almost shrieked.

"Aragorn!" she yelped in horror.

A vast crowd of ghostly figures was peering at them through the darkness, looming along the walls of the passage. Their faces were gaunt with decay, their staring eyes blank—pupil-less and empty. Shëanon stood in paralyzed disbelief. Though she could see these specters, they appeared as insubstantial as mist, their pointed spears as sharp as the pine-branches outside and yet obscured, as though by some shroud or veil, even as the heavy curtain of rain had long ago clouded her sight of the dark land beyond on the night their company had taken shelter under the outcrop of rock. In the darkness around them the dead men seemed to glow, and yet she could almost convince herself they were not there at all, like a trick of the darkness or a trick of the mind. As a very bright light might linger in one's eyes even after it is extinguished, so did these phantoms appear to her, like imprints or memories of men; as though they were in the world but not of it, or indeed, of the world but not entirely in it.

Shëanon seized Aragorn's arm and hauled him back a step, gazing at the ghostly silhouettes in terror, but Aragorn looked down at her in startled question and with a jolt she realized he could not see them.

"What do you see?" he asked, looking into her face.

Something touched her back and she almost jumped out of her skin, but it was only Legolas, who she realized stood beside her.

"It is the shapes of Men," he said to Aragorn. "And of horses."

Shëanon peered over her shoulder up into his face and watched his keen gaze rove over the passage.

"They hold banners like shreds of cloud," he murmured. "And are armored for battle. They are aware of us. Their sightless eyes are watching even now."

Suddenly, she realized that the wind whispering in her ears was not wind at all, but a wordless, menacing murmur, too remote to understand, but loud enough to hear, and there could be little doubt where it was coming from.

Without thinking, Shëanon took another step back, into Legolas, but she still held Aragorn's arm and practically dragged him back, too. Legolas caught her shoulder, and Aragorn looked down at her with wide eyes.

"They're trying to touch you," she hissed, for indeed many glowing hands were outstretched as though to grasp him, and she tugged him even closer, as around them Hasufel and Brego and Arod danced with fright.

For an instant, in the flickering light of the torch, she saw Aragorn grimace as though with disgust or caution, but then he clenched his jaw and cast her a meaningful look.

"They will find no purchase," he said firmly, and gently shook off her hand. He stepped forward with the torch held in front of him, speaking softly to Brego, and ventured onward even through the throng of shadowy phantoms.

Shëanon blanched.

She felt Legolas squeeze her shoulder, and with the hand that was not clutching Hasufel's reins she grasped blindly for his, unable to tear her gaze away from the dead faces leering at them. She squeezed his hand so hard that her fingers trembled.

"The ghosts of Men hold no terror for us, aiër," Legolas said quietly beside her ear, but, as the wispy hands began to reach for her, too, Shëanon shook her head even as she recoiled and pressed as close as she could into his body behind her.

"For me they do," she breathed, her heart pounding.

A clamor sounded behind them, and again Shëanon jumped.

"Never hear the end of it," a voice was muttering, and Hasufel, spooked, pulled again as Gimli, huffing and puffing, lumbered up alongside them. As her steed faltered and shook, however, she steeled herself. She knew she could not tarry forever in the passageway, and she most certainly could not go back. She had sworn to do whatever she could to help Aragorn, and that included walking the Paths of the Dead.

Releasing Legolas, she laid her hand upon Hasufel's eyes as he had done, and softly urged him to be calm. His ear fluttered and stilled beside her lips as she spoke to him, and though he still trembled, he stood steady in place.

She was trembling right along with him.

Wrenching her gaze away from the apparitions before her, she met Legolas's gaze one more time, and nodded. Aragorn was now several paces ahead, and she hastened after him. To her relief, the Dead did not try to hinder her or impede her way, but passing by their unmoving, unearthly faces was almost worse. The hands were still reaching for her, but broke against her like tendrils of disturbed smoke, and yet at every moment she feared that suddenly one would succeed in seizing her, or that one of the vacant, staring faces everywhere she looked would suddenly leap forth.

She quickly gained on Aragorn, and Legolas with Arod was at her heels, and Gimli she could hear stumbling behind.

"The Dead are following," Legolas murmured to them, and she felt another burst of dread. "They have been summoned."

"The Dead?" came Gimli's choking voice. "Summoned?"

Then it was indeed like Moria, plodding through the pitch black, with only one feeble light to lead the way, though Aragorn's torch was much dimmer than Gandalf's staff had been, and in Moria they had not been surrounded on all sides by ghosts. Shivers were endlessly running up and down her back, and her only comfort was that Legolas was right behind her, so that she did not have to fear that she would be accosted from behind. She stayed as close as she could to Aragorn, who did not quail or break his stride, not until he suddenly drew up short and went utterly rigid.

"Do not look down," he warned, but it was too late. Shëanon had heard the loud crunch of his boot striking something and had instantly glanced down to see what he had stepped on.

It was a human skull.

Her stomach turned. As they walked onward, there was nowhere to step that wasn't covered in bones, and they snapped and rolled beneath their feet. With a sick feeling she wondered if they could possibly have once been the bodies of the undead soldiers, somehow intact after thousands of years… Or if they were the victims of foolhardy men who had tried, in the preceding age, to walk this path.

What would happen if these spirits would not heed Aragorn? Would their bones join all the rest?

She heard Gimli utter a low groan of horror, and didn't blame him in the slightest.

Doggedly, she crunched onward, trying not to think about all the bones and skulls breaking under her, and determinedly not looking at the ghosts. Instead she concentrated on Aragorn and the light of his torch, and said aloud a prayer to Varda that they should be delivered from this lightless catacomb.

They rounded another bend, and suddenly the narrow passage opened into an immense cavern, so high and wide that Shëanon could not, in the shadows, see where it ended. Whether they stood in a great cave within the mountain or some ancient chamber carved by a forgotten people she could not have said, but what she could not mistake were the legions of warriors, shimmering like vapor, enveloping them completely.

Her jaw dropped.

The horses were now shaking so violently their fear was grievous to behold, and Shëanon's chest was heaving, too, her breath was so quick and shallow. The hiss of whispering voices had grown louder, and it was so cold in the cavern that she could see her breath before her face, and the air was disturbed as though by blowing gusts of wind even encased as they were in the heart of the mountain.

Aragorn finally halted, and so did the rest of them, and there was a moment of charged anticipation. Then, to her horror, his torch flickered and went out, and they were plunged into a darkness so profound that she could practically feel it pressing against her open eyes.

But she could still see the Dead.

"Who enters my domain?" asked a sudden voice, and the shiver down her spine was worse than ever, for this voice seemed to be everywhere, all around them—disembodied and adrift.

One of the specters stepped forth, and this one wore no helm but instead the shade of a crown about his brow, and the indistinct silhouette of his raiment suggested he might once have worn fine clothes and many gems. Through his mottled, corpse-like flesh she could see his skull, and the dark sockets of his eyes. As she stared at him in mute terror, he seemed to glow suddenly brighter, and all the rest of the ghosts did, too, and by the dim, greenish light of their cadaverous faces she saw Aragorn flinch and guessed that he must, at last, have been able to see them.

Gimli made a noise like he was suffocating.

For an instant, none of them moved or spoke, and again Shëanon imagined their bodies falling to decay among the skeletons at their feet, and she was shivering violently.

Then, finally, Aragorn answered.

"One who will have your allegiance," he said firmly. He stepped forward to stand before the King of the Dead, and he was not shaking, and for the first time since they had left Rivendell, Shëanon understood why Aragorn had been so tormented by the legacy of Isildur—why he had so dreaded that he might succumb to temptation and take the One Ring, and why Sauron would fear that he would get it, for Aragorn stood before an army of the Dead and was unafraid, and it was obvious to her that this man who had once carried her as a child upon his shoulders was mighty beyond the ken of mortal Men—mightier than even she had thought him.

The crowned ghost drew, even as they watched, a lucent blade from a transparent scabbard.

"The Dead do not suffer the living to pass," he said, in the same floating voice that seemed to whisper right beside her ears even though he stood across the chamber. Shëanon gasped and grasped for her own sword, though she somehow knew that it would not help her—it seemed obvious at a glance that her blade would pass straight through these shadows, useless.

But with a metallic hiss, Aragorn unsheathed his sword, which was bright even in the pitch darkness—Narsil remade, her father had said, and Aragorn held it aloft.

"You will suffer me," he snarled.

As one, the mouths of all the ghosts opened, and from them issued a haunting, cacophonous laugh that fell upon her ears like the dying breaths of the fallen Lórien wardens.

"The way is shut," the dead king leered, as though with relish. "It was made by those who are dead. And the Dead keep it. Now you must die."

Shëanon glanced, in horror, at her companions, but though Gimli stood open-mouthed and wide-eyed, Legolas's still face was as untroubled as ever, and Aragorn appeared only more resolute.

"I summon you to fulfill your oath," he commanded, in a voice that rang through the cavern.

But it seemed that the dead king had lost patience, for his ghoulish face twisted.

"None but the king of Gondor may command me," he hissed.

He raised his spectral sword, and she somehow knew that this one would not break like smoke as it fell, and Shëanon's heart stopped as he swung it, wrathfully, through the dead air—

With a grinding, reverberating clang, the ghostly blade collided with gleaming mithril, and was stopped, and she watched in amazement as Aragorn crossed swords with the King of the Dead.

The soldiers made a noise like angry snakes, and the dead king froze.

"That line was broken!" he cried.

Aragorn set his hand upon the ghost's glowing chestplate and shoved him back toward his undead host.

"It has been remade," he said.

He glared around at all of the assembled warriors and drew himself to his full height.

"I am Isildur's heir, the rightful king of Gondor, and I have the power to release you from this curse," he proclaimed, each word clear and carrying. "The same Dark Lord against whom you vowed to fight strives again for dominion over these lands. If you ride to battle with us and stand against the enemies of Gondor as you were sworn to do, I will hold your oaths fulfilled."

The ghosts had fallen as unnaturally silent as they had been in the passageway, and Shëanon was sweating as she looked at them all.

The King of the Dead made no answer.

"I am Isildur's heir," Aragorn repeated. "Fight for us, and regain your honor. What say you?"

The silence wore on. Still the king said nothing, nor did any of the others, not even as Aragorn turned to stare them all in their fleshless faces.

"What say you?" he asked again. Shëanon was holding her breath.

Then, even as Aragorn spoke, she realized that the soldiers were moving. Though they seemed to stand completely still, their bodies were drifting backward, the shapes of them growing smaller and smaller, seeming to shrink as they retreated, and Aragorn clearly noticed, too, for his voice pitched with desperation.

"You have my word!" he shouted. "Fight, and I will release you from this living death! What say you?"

Then the Dead vanished entirely, disappearing all at once, and without their eerie glow, the cavern was plunged once more into complete and unfathomable darkness.

For one heartbeat the four of them stood together, uncertain and expectant, but the Dead did not reappear. Shëanon could hear her own panicked breath, and she could hear Aragorn moving around over the clattering skulls and bones as though turning to gaze about the cavern in search of some answer or sign, but without even looking she could guess that there was none.

Then the ground began to tremble.

As though a terrible earthquake were shaking the bowels of the mountain, the cavern began to violently rock and vibrate, and Shëanon cried out as she fell against Hasufel's flank. She could see nothing, but she could feel the bones and skulls bouncing and rattling with the force of the shaking, and then, so loud that she might have screamed, an awful, thunderous crash sounded, and she knew, even though she could not see, what it was.

"The ceiling is caving in!" she cried.

"Run!" she heard Aragorn's voice.

With a squeal of terror, Hasufel bolted, and his reins were torn from her grasp.

"Hasufel!" she shouted in dismay, for more crashes were sounding, and she knew enormous slabs of rock must have been raining down around them.

"Follow him!" commanded a voice, but Shëanon could scarcely stand, much less run, over the quaking ground. She staggered and tried to flee, but she was blind and had no way to know if she was going the right way.

A hand seized her arm—she didn't know whose it was, but it didn't matter. It hauled her forward, and tripping and stumbling she sprinted in the direction it was pulling her as best as she could.

Then something enormous suddenly bowled into her from the side, and Shëanon was knocked down, and from the cry that sounded beside her as she struck the wracking ground and jumping bones, she knew it must have been Aragorn who had been pulling her, for she landed half on top of him. Terrified—that at any moment they would be crushed beneath a crumbling chunk of the ceiling, or that Arod might trample them even as Brego had just run them over—Shëanon scrambled up, groping in terror for Aragorn in the dark as they tried to stand. The bones on the ground seemed to have risen—like some gruesome tide that was roiling now around their knees, so that it was almost impossible to stand, much less to run, and another enormous crash sounded so close by that Aragorn threw himself on top of her, and they fell back down into the churning skulls.

"Legolas!" he screamed.

Somewhere behind them, Shëanon could hear Gimli bellowing.

"Straight ahead!" she heard Legolas's voice. "There is another passage!"

Fighting and struggling as the ground beneath them moved and as the skulls crushed them, they battled their way sightlessly forward. Shëanon was clutching Aragorn's arm like her life depended on it—his hand closed about hers in a painful hold—as they swam through the collapsing cavern.

Finally, just when she was sure that they would die, the wave of bones seemed to dissipate, and she and Aragorn staggered and fell out of the flood and felt earth beneath their feet again.

"Shea!" Aragorn shouted, as he hoisted her up and tried to push her forward, but Shëanon caught his hand and turned back.

"Legolas!" she screamed. "Gimli!"

The skulls were rising around them again.

"We're behind you!" came Legolas's shout. "Go!"

Aragorn shoved her and this time Shëanon ran, falling and scraping herself against the wall—they seemed to have found the passage Legolas had meant for them to take, and she could have wept to think that maybe it was the way out. The rock all around them was still quaking, the powerful tremors throwing them about, and as they tripped over enormous slabs of rubble it was clear that the passageway, too, was collapsing.

Then, ahead, she could see a faint glow: daylight.

Shëanon practically sobbed as they ran toward it. They rounded a bend, and they could see it. Straight ahead, the exit.

Aragorn flung her ahead of him and she sprinted as she had even from the pursuing Balrog out of the passage, out of the mountain, and into the day. Aragorn flew out after her, and then Legolas, who was practically carrying a flailing Gimli, emerged just as the passageway crumbled behind them and sealed the tunnel completely. A cloud of dust rose, and they could still feel the mountain trembling and hear the last of the crashes deep within, and the three horses were running, terrified, over the steep mountainside further down. The four of them stood for a moment in shock, panting and sweating.

Then the shuddering within the mountain ceased, and there was a ringing silence, and Shëanon bent to brace her hands upon her knees, her heart still pounding.

"Is everyone—alright?" she gasped, clutching at her ribs, which were aching furiously with every heaving breath.

Legolas touched her back and looked down at her as though in worry, but even as she met his gaze she noticed that something else had drawn his attention away. She frowned and glanced hurriedly over her shoulder, still paranoid and jumpy after their narrow escape, and as she looked out into the distance, her heart stopped.

Rising into the sky far ahead along the horizon was a massive, black cloud, darker and denser than any natural storm that she had ever seen. It seemed to grow and unfold, unfurling, and as it spread it appeared to obscure the sun itself. Shëanon was seized by a cold horror, for it was immediately clear where this Darkness originated, and what its purpose was. She turned to her companions in disbelief, and saw that they were all staring, stunned, at the sight before them.

Then Aragorn seemed to stagger.

He did not speak or cry out, but at the sight of the advancing shadow, he fell upon his knees on the ground, and his silence was somehow far worse than any sound of despair he might have made. So many times throughout the course of their journey, Shëanon had looked to him and found resolve, or courage, or strength. For the first time, he appeared lost and defeated. His blade fell to the grass beside him, forgotten in his grief. Shëanon could see it upon his face, and never—never—had she seen Aragorn the way she saw him, then: not as a ranger, nor as a warrior, not even as a man; in that instant he looked to her like a boy alone in the vast world, one whose strength was not enough to bear the weight of the burden set upon his shoulders.

And yet he was a king. She saw it plain as day, for she had seen this before: on the face of Théoden, as the Hornburg had been overrun by the uruk-hai. This was a king in turmoil and agony, one who loved his people, and who had failed to save them. It was so obvious then, to Shëanon, that though he had for so long been plagued by doubt, though he wore no crown, and though another ruled Gondor in his stead, Aragorn had at last taken the mantle of his birthright upon himself. Before her was the king of Gondor, and he bowed his head, and wept.

For a moment she was numb. She looked from the Darkness far beyond, to Aragorn, and to Legolas and Gimli. Then Legolas left her side, and as she watched he went to stand behind Aragorn, and he laid a hand on his shoulder. Aragorn's own hands balled into fists so tight upon his lap that his knuckles were white. That was when it finally hit her, for his anguish was so raw that it shook her to her bones.

They had failed.

Shëanon's eyes welled, and she felt sick with denial as she carefully crossed to Aragorn's other side. As she knelt beside him, she wanted to tell him that it would still be alright—they could find another way, another answer—they did not need the Army of the Dead to save Minas Tirith… but the words would not come, for she did not believe them. Who else was there to bring? There was no other help to be found, and Gandalf was counting on them. Merry and Pippin were counting on them. Théoden and Éomer and all of the Rohirrim, and all the people of Minas Tirith were counting on them… And they would die. Shëanon sat beside Aragorn on the mountainside, and gently set her hand upon his other shoulder, for she could offer him no other comfort.

She felt Gimli hobble up alongside her and for a moment they all gazed, in devastation and heartbreak, at the advancing plume of black smoke far in the distance. Shëanon felt her tears wet her cheeks. Though she had known what was at stake from the moment she had learned the One Ring had been found, it was far different to be faced with this evil than to imagine it, and here they beheld with their waking eyes the future of Middle-Earth: a lightless shadow without ray of sun or star to cover all the lands, and under it, she knew, would march the hosts of Mordor. She thought of all the fleeing people—the elderly men and women, the mothers with young children—who had crowded the keep at Helm's Deep, and how their homes had been destroyed, and how the orcs and wargs had attacked them even in their attempt to seek refuge. She thought of all the Lórien wardens dying all around her as the Uruk-hai had laid siege to the fortress. She thought of Saruman's glee when he had told Legolas that the Woodland Realm was burning.

Suddenly she understood why her father had so desperately pleaded with her to seek the sea.

They were losing.

And it had sounded like her father thought Frodo was failing, too.

Shëanon closed her eyes so she would not have to see the rising haze of ash and fumes, and lifted her free hand to cover her face. She felt a hand settle upon her own shoulder. After everything they had been through, how could it be that they would fail? And all because some dead men wouldn't honor their words?

Her soul felt sick with fury.

But then, abruptly, she felt again the frightful prickle at the back of her neck, like she was being watched, and like the blood in her veins had turned to ice, and as she turned, Gimli's hand fell from her shoulder as he jumped in shock.

The King of the Dead had emerged from the mountain, and stood like a nightmare in the daylight before Aragorn.

"We fight," he said.

XXX

Shëanon could not have said how she endured it, except that she knew she had no choice. For many leagues they rode as swiftly as the horses could manage, stopping as infrequently as they possibly could, and the Dead followed all the while. She could feel them behind her as they rode through Gondor with what she deemed was unprecedented haste—indeed she wondered if the horses ran so quickly because they could sense the dire need of their riders, or because they fled before the pursuing ghosts. She did not look back at them, but in the moments when Aragorn would halt to allow the horses to rest, she sometimes caught glimpses of them trailing behind, and flinched.

Twice only did they try to sleep, and when they did, it was only for a couple scant hours. Shëanon shamelessly pressed close to Legolas even though Aragorn and Gimli could see, for it was the only way she could bear to close her eyes and even try to sleep knowing the Oathbreakers were so close by. The Darkness spreading from Mordor had stretched overhead, so that there was no star to be seen, and only their spectral followers were visible in the deep night. Shëanon huddled on the ground and drew up the hood of her cloak, hiding her face against Legolas's chest and trying to ignore the prickling chill of the sleepless Dead behind her by focusing on his fëa instead. She breathed in the smell of his skin, and desperately clove to his warmth and his solid, strong body, and, somehow, as he held her, she was able to drift off. How Aragorn and Gimli slept, she had no idea—Aragorn had sat at her other side, and it seemed to her that he wasn't even trying to sleep. Gimli she suspected tried but failed.

"Come, we must ride again—we can delay no longer," Aragorn insisted the moment that Legolas roused her. It was still pitch black, and she could scarcely see him pacing back and forth before the horses. Blearily Shëanon had sat up, and immediately she felt the lingering unease and unsettling, creeping whisper that was the Shadow Host somewhere behind her. Legolas's face was stony and troubled as he grasped her hand and pulled her to her feet. "We must reach Pelargir by nightfall tomorrow if we wish to intercept the Corsair fleet."

With that he leapt impatiently back into the saddle, and Shëanon scrambled to follow suit. This frantic energy that had seized him did not dissipate, but only grew more and more pronounced the further they traveled through Gondor, and the heavier the gloom settled upon the land. The next—and last—time they stopped to rest the horses, he would not even sit until she, Legolas, and Gimli entreated him.

Now they barreled over the land beneath the Shadow, and though she knew somewhere above the sun must have still shined, the world was dark. She thought of the encompassing darkness that had befallen Arda when the trees of Valinor had been destroyed, or when the great lamps had been toppled, and she shuddered, for this unending twilight was terrifying and ominous, like a portent of the end of days.

They encountered no one as they travelled, not even as they passed by villages and hamlets in the wide country, for it seemed all people had either retreated into their homes to abide the horrific Darkness, or perhaps they had fled to some refuge, or indeed perhaps they could feel, as she could, the threat of the Dead approaching, and had hidden.

They crossed the river Ringló and passed into Lebennin, and found that many towns had been pillaged and burned, and Aragorn bid them ride with even more haste even as Hasufel, beneath her, was already running so swiftly she might have wondered if her steed had wings to carry him so fleetly onward over the hills.

Finally, when she was hurting all over from so many endless hours in the saddle, and when the horses' strength was waning, and when she had begun to fear that they might not reach it in time, they came to Pelargir. It was obvious to her at once that they had come upon it at last, and would have been even if she hadn't smelled the river in her every breath or glimpsed the wide mouth of the Anduin, for the port city was under attack.

As they gained the city gates, a scene of mayhem and ruin met them: buildings had been ransacked and detritus littered the streets. People were fleeing up the road even as their company passed them, and it was clear why they should flee, for cruel-looking men were seizing women and children as they ran, and were shackling them and binding their hands, and Shëanon's mouth fell open with horror and fury. At the river, an immense fleet of some fifty ships bobbed upon the black tide of the water, and upon their decks and on the docks a battle had broken out—the sailors and captains of the port and the bravest men of the city fought with the pirates, whose long sabers were broader at the ends than at the hilts, and wickedly curved. The battle was bloody and desperate, and as Hasufel bore her through the pandemonium after Aragorn she drew her sword.

She did not need it.

"Corsairs of Umbar! Throw down your weapons!" Aragorn suddenly bellowed as they drew nigh the Anduin. His thunderous voice was so loud that it carried even over the shouts of battle and the screams of the women and children in the streets behind. "The allies of Mordor are not welcome here, and will meet their ends if they harm any man, woman, or child of Gondor! Flee now if you fear Death!"

For a single instant many of the men nearest paused and did indeed look to Aragorn, who astride Brego had come to a halt above them on the high road over the docks, and for a moment they appeared astonished. Whether it was because the fear of the unseen Dead Army had fallen upon them or simply because Aragorn looked utterly ferocious, many of them seemed to lower their weapons in hesitation. Shëanon didn't blame them, for in his fury Aragorn was fearsome to behold, and the sword held in his hand was shining clean and cruel like a wrathful fire, and the light in his eyes was righteous and terrible.

Then the Corsairs set their gaze upon her, and upon Legolas and Gimli, and seeing no others, their hesitation turned to laughter, and as the men of Pelargir cast them tentative, dubious looks, the pirates upraised their scimitars again and jeered.

"If the women of Gondor are ugly as pigs, the men of the land are as dimwitted as pigs!" laughed one of the closest mercenaries. His eyes were dark beneath his brow and shone with smug mirth, and his accent as he spoke the common tongue was thick and unfamiliar to her. "There are four of you and many hundreds of us! Three of you, not counting the girl! What do you intend?"

Shëanon looked up at Aragorn. His eyes were narrowed.

"We intend to seize your ships," he said in a voice as sharp and biting as his blade.

The Corsair men sneered and began to do battle again.

"You and whose army?" one asked.

Aragorn raised his eyebrows.

"This army."

Shëanon watched, grimly, as the faces of the mercenaries turned white with terror, their eyes wide and their mouths falling open. Even as Aragorn turned to command the Army of the Dead, they had charged, and the Corsairs now could clearly see them. With a cold rush that stirred her hair and raised goosebumps over her skin, she felt the swarm of the ghosts as they swept past her. The Dead of Dunharrow rode forth on their undead steeds, whose hooves glanced even over the surface of the river and carried them toward the ships. Their pallid spears and swords were eerily luminous beneath the dark Shadow of Mordor, and their dead faces were even worse in battle than they had been beneath the mountain. They bore down upon the Corsairs like a rising tidal wave.

With the fear of Death upon them, the pirates fled like dogs. On the docks they tried to flee back through the city, but the ghosts seemed to have taken to the streets to deal with the slavers and thieves there, too, for Corsair men were sprinting toward the harbor from the opposite direction. In the end, most jumped into the Anduin—she could see mercenaries leaping over the sides of the docked ships as the phantoms swept from stern to prow. If they hadn't been destroying the city, abducting the women, and killing the men, she might have pitied them, for the sight of the charging ghosts was like an image from a nightmare, and even though she knew that she herself was in no danger, she still trembled to behold it.

And the people of Pelargir were stricken by terror, too. Even as the Corsairs dove into the Anduin where they tried in vain to swim against the current, the sailors and soldiers of the port were shouting and retreating, their faces stark with fear and bewilderment.

"It is the Dead Men of the Mountains!" they cried, and many dropped their weapons—in surrender or fear.

Then Aragorn, who had sat in wait while the ghosts drove off the enemy, urged Brego forward and down onto the dock.

"Stand, Men of Pelargir!" he cried, with his sword held high in the air. He rode up and down the long pier, Brego's pounding footfalls thundering over the ground. "Minas Tirith is besieged! One ship at least we must take to bear us to Harlond, and more if we are able! As many hands as can be mustered we will need! Let all who would stand against the Enemy take up arms! Seize the black ships!"

His voice rent the air and was as clear and piercing as a horn, and Brego suddenly seemed twice his usual size and even faster than before, and though he still wore his dark, travel-worn ranger's garb, Aragorn looked more resplendent than he might have in shining mail, like some great lord or hero of old. And though Shëanon thought for a moment, seeing their fearful faces, that the men would not hear or heed him, at his rallying cry their fear seemed abruptly to leave them, and they took heart, and even those who were not soldiers or captains seemed to her suddenly brave and valiant as they roared and ran to man the ships. She looked to Legolas and Gimli beside her, and Legolas, too, appeared impressed, and at his nod she urged Hasufel down the ramp to the dock.

The Dead waited now in still silence upon the shore, and she could tell that the eyes of the men could no longer see them where they waited, and there was a frantic commotion throughout the harbor as the sailors and soldiers seized the Corsair fleet. Aragorn commanded them to free the slaves on the ships, and they too joined their cause, and once they had loaded the horses into the great flagship moored on the river, Shëanon ran back and forth over the rocking deck, taking orders from the sailors to help make the ship ready to go. She had been on boats on the Bruinen, but never a large vessel built for open waters, though it did not seem to matter—she would do anything she was told if it would help get them to Minas Tirith. Even Aragorn, whom all the men seemed to have instantly accepted as their leader, did not stand calling orders but instead with Legolas weighed the anchor and set about hoisting the mainsail.

It was as they pulled the halyard that it happened: Shëanon stood in front of Legolas, heaving the rope to lift the sail as he stood and helped pull behind her, when suddenly the rope behind her slackened, and under the sudden weight of the rigging she was dragged forward, digging in her heels, and the rope slid in her hands and burned her palms until she was able to catch herself.

She wheeled around in confusion to see what had happened, half-expecting to find some Corsair mercenary had climbed back up onto the ship to attack Legolas, for she could not imagine what else might have caused him to drop the rope and abandon their task, but there was no mercenary, and nothing at first that she could see.

Legolas stood behind her, and seemed to have completely frozen. His gaze was uplifted, tilted toward the sky, and a stunned, stricken look was so apparent upon his face that Shëanon almost dropped the rope, too, and looked wildly upward, remembering when the Nazgûl had flown overhead on the plains of Rohan and thinking that one must have been approaching now, so alarmed did he appear.

Instead she saw, far above, a large bird with a narrow beak and webbed feet circling high over the ship, stark white against the black veil, and from it came a trilling call.

Legolas was staring at it, and when she at last understood she felt like she'd been hit in the face, and then she did drop the rope.

The rigging, unsecured, came loose and the sail began to plummet, and Legolas finally gave a start and caught the line again. Even on his own he was able to raise the mainsail back up, though Shëanon, aghast, hastened to help him. Together they secured the halyard, and once they were done, he met her gaze, but she could think of nothing to say. The look in his eyes terrified her—haunted and shaken he seemed, even as he stood before her with his hair blown by the wind, and his entire body seemed tense and coiled as though he were poised at that very moment to—and was only barely restraining himself from—abandoning ship right then and there, to journey in the opposite direction.

Towards the sea.

For the sea, she knew, was what he now desired. The sea, and what lay beyond it. She heard again the words of Galadriel as when Gandalf had first spoken them in Fangorn Forest:

Beware the call of the sea, for with the cry of the gull, you will lose your heart to the West.

She felt herself racked by a powerful sense of foreboding.

Suddenly hands grasped her wrists, and it took her a moment to comprehend what Legolas was doing as she struggled to come to terms with the fact that he had been afflicted by a terrible yearning to leave Middle-Earth, and the implications of this development. Then she realized that he held her hands palm-up before him and was staring down at her raw, abraded skin with a look of disbelief and fury upon his face. At once she tried to pull them away, but he tightened his hold and would not let her, and his brow creased as though with guilt.

"It's nothing," she whispered anxiously, trying again to pull her hands away. She was still trying to think what she could possibly say to him. She opened her mouth to speak without even knowing what she was going to say, but suddenly someone had called both their names, and they looked up, startled, to see Aragorn beckoning for them up at the bow.

Shëanon looked back into Legolas's eyes, and though he still seemed taken aback, some composure had returned to his face, and he lifted one of her hands to his lips and lightly kissed her palm as though in wordless apology. Then he released her at last and hastened to Aragorn's side.

XXX

Their journey up the Anduin was arduous. The current was against them, and they all had to take turns rowing until they ached to drive the ships up the river toward Minas Tirith. The sails hung dead above them; there was no wind or breeze to aid their effort, and so for many hours they made little progress. It was again difficult not to succumb to the weight of fear and despair in her heart, for Shëanon knew that every second now mattered, and their slow slog against the river was maddening.

And even worse, she had had no time yet to speak with Legolas. Indeed, it was the dead of night when she finally felt someone touch her shoulder, and she jumped and spun around, her nerves terribly frayed, but it was only Aragorn.

Shëanon relaxed and slumped for a moment against the railing beside her. She was utterly exhausted, and Aragorn plainly was, too. For a moment he looked down at her in silence, and though he stood as straight and as tall as ever, there was a strained look in his eyes that she had seldom seen.

"Where do you need me?" she asked him, standing upright again. Her palms were still stinging from the rope burn, and her ribs were throbbing fiercely, but she would not have admitted it to him under pain of death. "Below—?"

But Aragorn shook his head.

"Take some rest," he said, and she could hear that it was a command. Perhaps she scowled, for suddenly his gaze looked gentler. "Let the sailors sail for now. We have journeyed many leagues and toiled ceaselessly for many days. We must have strength enough to fight once we reach Minas Tirith."

Shëanon eyed him with suspicion.

"We?" she echoed dubiously. "So then you mean to rest, too?"

Aragorn frowned, but he nodded.

"For a time," he conceded, though she could tell at once that his idea of rest would be much, much shorter than he would ask of her. Shëanon studied him for a moment, squinting toward him through the darkness. There was a look in his eyes that reminded her of Lothlórien, after Gandalf had fallen at Khazad-dûm, and she had sensed a well of doubt and worry in him to lead the company and secure the fate of their quest.

Then, beneath the light of the lantern above him, the delicate chain about his neck glinted, and Shëanon stared at the pendant resting over his heart.

Her throat was suddenly tight.

"Did my father tell you about Arwen?" she whispered, though she knew that indeed he must have, and sure enough, Aragorn went rigid at once. She chanced a glance up at him and was met by a terrible mask of grief that pierced her.

He nodded.

Shëanon swallowed thickly but said nothing, for indeed what was there to say? She didn't even think she could bear to speak words of hope that her sister would be all right, for to do so would be to acknowledge there was a chance she wouldn't be. Aragorn it seemed felt the same, for they gazed at one another in silence for a long moment, while the many oars down below cut the water, and their only comfort and communion was each other.

Then she scrubbed her hands over her face.

"Legolas—" she began, but she cut herself short, for she had suddenly changed her mind and didn't want to say it. What would she even have said? Legolas heard a seagull earlier and now I fear he will wish to leave me? It felt an absurdly unimportant problem compared to everything else that awaited them—certainly it was less awful by far than Arwen fading—and yet the shadow it casted upon her felt even darker and more dreadful than the Darkness of Mordor that had blotted out the sun and moon.

She bit her lip and cleared her throat.

"Do you know where Legolas went?" she asked instead, looking back up into Aragorn's face.

By the shrewd look upon it, she guessed he must somehow have known what she hadn't said, and wondered just how obvious it had been to him and to Gimli that Legolas had been so distracted all night, and indeed how worried about him she had been.

Aragorn squeezed her shoulder, and looked meaningfully toward the stern where a dark shape could be seen standing at the other end of the ship.

Shëanon again made Aragorn promise to take some rest, and then anxiously left his side. The deck beneath her feet swayed with the motion of the water, and she tried to tell herself that that was why her knees felt weak and why she felt a bit sick. She quietly climbed the steps at the back of the ship, where Legolas stood at the railing staring out at the river behind them, where the other ships were following, and where, behind them, the ghosts marched on the water in their wake. Shëanon could just see them—a faint, misty light like a greenish spray upon the river.

Legolas didn't move as she reached him. His arms were crossed over his chest, and he stood far enough away from the closest lantern that with his back turned she could scarcely see his face, and there was a tremendous air of suffering about him that shocked her.

She gently touched his arm, and tried not to show how alarmed she felt.

"Legolas?" she whispered.

In the darkness he looked down at her for a moment and laid his hand over hers, but he did not reply, and his gaze was unspeakably troubled. Shëanon felt a pang within her at the sight of his distress, and stepped closer at once. What could she possibly do or say to help him? How many times had he been there to ease her hurts and alleviate her fear? How often had he laid her worries to rest? She wished desperately to comfort him, and yet she doubted there was any comfort to be found. Lady Galadriel herself had warned him; it seemed likely to her that this could not be undone. Her heart trembled, and for a moment she couldn't breathe.

Shëanon steeled herself, and spoke softly beside him.

"Is it the sea?" she whispered into the silence.

But when Legolas looked down at her again he seemed to blink in consternation and surprise, and then to her astonishment his face grew even stonier.

"Not yet, aiër," he murmured. For a moment it seemed that was all he would say, but he must have seen something in her face that made him speak again, for as he continued it was as if each word were uttered against his will, or maybe against his better judgment. "It is true that I have heard its call, but the sea will hold no sway over me yet."

He set both hands on the rail before him and looked down over the black river, invisible in the moonless night, though they could hear it rushing below them.

Utterly bewildered by this answer, Shëanon stood looking at him for a long moment, and her mind was racing. She had seen his shock when he had heard the cries of the gull, and it had been instantly clear by the bereft, urgent restlessness that had seemed to transform his face that Galadriel's warning had been well founded, and that the Sea-Longing had indeed afflicted him as she had foreseen. There was no question that it was so.

And yet she knew that Legolas would not lie to her. If he claimed that the sea was not yet troubling him, then it must have been because there was something else—something worse—that bothered him so much more that the Sea-Longing was momentarily set aside…

She had little doubt what must have been the matter. Again she saw his face at the encampment of Dunharrow, when they had been about to leave. He had appeared truly anguished, his fair face mired in misery, and it was not hard to guess why.

And yet he did not seem eager to discuss it.

Shëanon bit her lip, wondering if she should mention it, and looked up at him.

"What did my father say to you?" she finally asked. To her dismay she saw that Legolas's face creased with further disquiet, his brow furrowed and his jaw clenched. She didn't think she had ever seen him so discomposed, not even before the battle of Helm's Deep, when they had argued over her staying to fight and he had yelled at her outright. He turned and stared back at her for a long moment, not speaking, his gaze tormented. Shëanon felt her heart pounding. She had no idea what could have transpired between Lord Elrond and Legolas to leave him so disturbed, and disturbed he seemed indeed. Her first thought was that her father might have brought some word of the Elvenking or of the Woodland Realm, some dark tidings that had shaken Legolas to hear, and she reached for his hand in trepidation.

But he did not answer.

"Legolas?" she asked nervously.

As she watched he stepped forth and set both his hands upon her shoulders, and she gazed up into his eyes. The two stood studying each other for a moment, he evidently deliberating, and she waiting with baited breath.

She put her hands on his arms.

"He said that he held me still to my word," he said at last, still looking into her eyes. "To keep you safe."

Shëanon watched him tensely, knowing that there must have been more.

He clenched his jaw, but did not look away from her. For a moment she almost thought he would not continue, that he would not confide in her after all. His grip upon her shoulders tightened.

"He bid me deliver you over the sea to Valinor, if our quest should fail and the One Ring return to Sauron's hand," he said grimly. "Even if it meant forcibly removing you from Aragorn's side, and seeing you safely aboard a ship at any cost."

Shëanon felt her jaw drop.

"He—what?" she stuttered, shocked.

Legolas did not so much as blink, his regard steady and agonized.

She shook her head.

"He asked you to—against my will!" she echoed with numb disbelief. "Forcibly remove—"

Never would she have imagined her father would resort to such a thing.

But Legolas did not seem to find it shocking.

"It is clear to me that your father would not ask it unless he knew your life to be in utter peril," he said.

Utter peril. Her father had spoken those very words, but to ask Legolas to—what? Kidnap her? Cart her off to the Undying Lands with her hands tied?

"Indeed you would have to force me," Shëanon seethed. "I am not going across the sea! Legolas, if our quest should fail, Aragorn would need us more than ever! How could you think to abandon him? And what of Gimli, and—"

"Shëanon—"

"How could you agree to—"

"Shëanon," he said again. He shook his head. "I told him I could not."

She blinked.

"You—?"

"Already once I have tried to make such a choice for you," he said, his voice very low. "It was wrong of me to do so at Helm's Deep. It would be wrong of me now."

Shëanon stared at him.

"I will force you to do nothing."

He drew her softly closer, and though his eyes were dark with worry, his conviction could not be mistaken, and for the second time that night, she was stunned.

Without speaking, she threw her arms around him and hugged him fiercely. Her heart felt so swollen within her chest that she ached with love and with gratitude, and she closed her eyes as he stiffly returned her embrace. Though it was clear that Legolas was overcome with worry for her, for a moment she could not summon speech to reassure him, or indeed to say anything at all, so moved was she by what he had said. She felt his arms draw her even more closely against him, and her breath left her. Did he have any idea how much that meant to her?

They stood holding one another for several long moments in the chilly wind and starless night. Shëanon focused on his fëa, shivering, wondering what she could possibly say to convey to him how she felt. How wholly she loved him. How—seen—she felt, that he should say he respected her decisions when for so long she had felt no one around her did. How guilty she felt to be the reason for the terrible burden of terror so obviously set upon him and how she would do anything to lift it from him, and yet how scared she was, too.

Shëanon was utterly terrified.

When she drew away, however, Legolas was no less tense, and there was no sign of relief or ease of confession about him to have shared this with her.

She felt herself grimace.

"There's something else," she guessed. It was not a question, and he did not deny it.

Legolas's face was entirely impassive, but his piercing gaze was bereaved, and he seemed to hesitate. To her surprise, he opened his mouth as though to speak and then closed it again.

"Your father also said that if I could return you safely to his arms... he would allow us to be wed."

Shëanon's jaw dropped.

Never in her entire life had she been rendered so entirely and completely speechless. She stared at him in utter astonishment.

Legolas was studying her face as though to determine what she was thinking, but she was wholly at a loss. Finally, after the span of several shallow breaths, it occurred to her that for an ellon who had only a few nights before lost himself to the passion of their kisses and slid his hand under her clothes, he looked remarkably grim to gain her father's consent to their union.

"You look very unhappy to have heard it," she managed at last.

He looked at her as though with pity.

"Meleth nín," he whispered. "Your father believes our battle is already lost. Could you not see it in his eyes? His heart has been taken by despair. Little chance for victory I would guess he has foreseen for us. He was not giving me his blessing. He was setting me a task—to keep you safe and deliver you from this evil. He would deem me worthy of your hand if I succeed because he believes it to be a nigh impossible feat. It was as much a warning as a promise, and I cannot deny to you that his words have cast a shadow of terror upon me that I cannot escape. Tempted I am indeed to heed him and turn you from this course, though I told you I will not."

She felt like her thoughts were battering around inside her head.

"Why won't you, if you are so tempted?"

Legolas stared at her for a long moment.

"If our places were reversed, and my own father had asked you to force me to leave, could you do it?"

Shëanon hesitated.

"Would you be able to overpower me, and remove me from Aragorn's side if I did not wish it?"

She felt her stomach sink, and she looked at Legolas in bewilderment. Abruptly she understood that he was not asking if she could bring herself to do it—he was asking if she would be physically capable of making him do anything. She thought suddenly of their spar, and the unbreakable hold he had had upon her when he caught her against his chest and held his blade before her throat, and her eyes as she gazed back at him were wide.

They both knew the obvious answer, but still she said it.

"No," she whispered.

Legolas nodded grimly.

"Indeed, you could not," he agreed. "And that is why I must not. In doing so I would betray you, and that I would never do."

Shëanon closed her eyes, overwhelmed by the obvious depth and extent of his fear and conflict. Though she had felt so certain of her decision when she had resolved to remain with the company, she suddenly felt a renewal of doubt to bear such intimate witness to Legolas's anguish.

"Do you think I'm doing the right thing?" she asked.

"I do not know. Wiser than me by far is your father, and he is adamant that you must flee… but no less wise is Mithrandir, and he has never once said that you should turn back."

She frowned and drew a deep breath.

"What would you do?"

"If I were in your place?" he asked.

Shëanon nodded, and Legolas was silent for a long moment.

"I would go on," he said finally.

He lightly touched her cheek.

Then Shëanon reached for him again, and at once was returned to his embrace. She pressed her face against his shoulder, standing on her toes to be closer to him, and held him fiercely. His arms around her were almost desperately tight, and she felt his face against her neck, and his fingers in her hair. In their tent at Dunharrow, Legolas had told her not to imagine the worst, insisting that they would both be all right, but she could feel now in every place their bodies were touching that he no longer believed it. They held each other for a long time as though they might never see each other again, and she did her best to calm the frantic beat of her heart and slow her hurried breath, lest her swelling panic overcome her.

"The danger for me is no greater than the danger for any of us," she reasoned uncertainly, against his skin. "Sauron has wanted to kill Aragorn since he was a child. And Gandalf is doubtless his greatest foe. And Frodo and Sam must even now be journeying through Mordor itself carrying the One Ring. Surely I am in no greater peril than they are."

Legolas said nothing for such a long time that she drew slightly back to look at him.

"This fight is bigger than any one of us, aiër," he murmured. "I know it here. But I do not feel it here."

He touched his fingers to his temple as he spoke, and then laid his hand over his heart.

"The Army of the Dead has joined us," she whispered firmly in response. "If we can make safe Minas Tirith… If Frodo and Sam are close… There is still hope. We cannot give up."

Legolas pressed her against him again.

"I have not given up hope, aiër. Not yet," he said beside her ear, and again she closed her eyes and stood clutching him to her own heart. She had a sudden, terrifying thought that if she let him go, she might never again be held in his arms.

When eventually she opened her eyes, she gasped.

Upon the horizon away to the northwest, through the darkness, there was a bright, orange glow.

Shëanon lifted her head, blinking in confusion.

"Legolas?" she asked, for Legolas must have felt her sudden unease, and he followed her gaze over his shoulder.

The Anduin turned a bend, and the scarlet light grew even brighter, and then Legolas grasped her hand as he drew her with him back across the deck to the prow of the ship, where they peered through the gloom in disbelief. Shëanon heard footsteps and turned to see Aragorn hurrying forward, with Gimli beside him, and many of the sailors seemed to have noticed, too, for they were leaving their stations.

"What is it?" Shëanon breathed. The crushing darkness was one thing. An immense light was quite another.

"It is Minas Tirith," Aragorn answered. Something in his voice sent a chill down her back. "The city is burning."

There was a long, deep silence at these words, as everyone absorbed them and stared, appalled and stricken, at the distant blaze.

"Don't just stand there!" Gimli suddenly shouted, and brandishing his axe he sprinted across the deck. "To the oars! Row!"

Everyone gaped at him, and then with a cry, the men left the rails and hastened, furious, toward the hatch in his wake. Shëanon ran forward with the others, but Gimli had scarcely begun his climb below when suddenly the ship gave a violent lurch, and she staggered and would have fallen if Legolas had not seized her arm.

Regaining their feet, everyone looked wildly around to see what had happened—or perhaps the sailors had been able to tell, but Shëanon's first thought had been that some monster like the Watcher in the Water at the gates of Moria had hit the ship. But instead she saw, with such a rush of amazement and unbridled relief that she cried out, that nothing had hit the ship at all, but the sails. A sudden, powerful wind was blowing from the south, and bearing them swiftly up the river.

XXX

Never for the rest of her life would Shëanon forget the first moment she glimpsed the White City.

Her immediate thought, as soon as she set her eyes upon it, was of the start of their journey, when Boromir had described to them the beauty and wonder of Minas Tirith in the snow, and how his voice had been soft with reverent awe that had touched her, and how she had imagined the city beneath a gleaming frost, white and clear, and glistening in the snowfall.

Then she thought that if he could have seen his city now, Boromir would surely have wept.

Over the field of battle she could see the shape of the city looming in the distance, with the seven rising levels for which it was renowned, and the great tower at the highest-most point like a spire against the black sky. It was clear that indeed Minas Tirith was white—that the stones that shaped its walls and ramparts were white, or had been white—but through the haze of dirt and rubble, and the terrible shadow lying upon it, the city looked dark, and scorched with soot and blackened by smoke. The whole thing seemed to be smoldering, and even as she beheld it there were still many raging fires burning, with tall flames climbing ever higher, and many walls and roofs were in ruins, crumbling and wrecked, she guessed, by the great catapults and battering rams encircling the lower level.

It was beyond destruction. It was utter devastation. As Boromir had lain mortally wounded at Amon Hen, pierced by many arrows and struggling in his last breaths, so too did Minas Tirith appear to her: as a once great and mighty champion overcome and dying.

The field of battle was no better. Before the feet of the city it stretched, writhing and terrible over the Pelennor Fields. Shëanon had expected the orcs, but she had not been able to grasp just how many there would be: thousands and thousands, as far as she could see. And even worse than the orcs were the foes she had not anticipated: enormous trolls, and battalions of Haradrim Men, and, though she had before seen them only in diagrams in her father's library, what she realized must have been ennebyn—oliphaunts brought out of the south. The trolls were clobbering holes in the city walls. The oliphaunts were trampling all in their path. And the orcs and Haradrim were battling what she could see, with a horrific lurch of agony, were what was left of the Rohirrim, for very few horsemen there seemed to be, but very, very many bodies of men and horses littered the ground.

Worst of all—and her blood ran cold at the sight of them—were the Nazgûl. She remembered again the beating wings and terrible screech she had heard on the plains of Rohan, when one of the Ringwraiths had almost found them in the dense fog. Now, she could see them. Their steeds were hideous, monstrous beasts with leathery wings like a bat's, and long necks ending in razor-sharp teeth. Sauron's servants rode these over the battle, and they swooped like birds of prey, seizing men from the battlefield and soldiers from the city in the fell beasts' grasping claws only to drop them from terrible heights…

Shëanon looked at Legolas, her eyes wide with fear and horror, and his expression was livid. They were crouched kneeling on the deck as the ships came into the port of Harlond, ducked down behind the rails so that the orcs would not see them coming, and peering around the rails and rigging they could spy the city. She imagined Merry and Pippin somewhere in that terrible scene, and she almost did weep.

But Aragorn had his hand upraised, bidding them all wait for the moment they would reveal themselves, and she could feel the ship bobbing and rocking in the choppy water against the moorings and dock, and knew that that moment was almost upon them. She clenched her sword in her fist, looking into Gimli's furious face, and Aragorn's flashing eyes, and meeting Legolas's fierce gaze. The look of allegiance that passed between the four of them was powerful and unsurpassed.

Close by, she could hear the voices of the orcs, and her heart swelled with terror. She tried to tell herself that they had an army of ghosts that would lay waste to the hosts of Mordor, but this thought did not comfort her, because there were tens of thousands of enemy soldiers below, with massive beasts who could crush her in an instant, and the Nazgûl themselves, and she meant to run out and meet them.

She would run out and meet them.

As the sailors docked the ships and Aragorn held one finger in the air, tense and listening, Shëanon grasped frantically for Legolas. She seized his wrist, holding tight to him for one moment longer—she suddenly wanted to feel him just one last time before they went into battle, and though he held both his knives in his hands and could not reach for her in return, he met her eyes and looked resolutely back. They gazed at one another for a long moment, and Shëanon was trembling with nerves and with anger and with fear and determination, but looking into his face it was just the two of them, and she knew without question that Legolas knew and understood all that was in her heart.

"Now!" Aragorn suddenly cried, leaping from the ship, and at once she, Legolas, and Gimli leapt after him, and she could hear the sailors and soldiers following at their heels.

She hit the ground and saw the bewildered faces of the Orcs—the grey skin and gnashing teeth and inhuman eyes that had haunted her after Helm's Deep—but soon their surprise became horror, and she knew they must have been able to see the Army of the Dead.

"Charge!" Aragorn commanded the ghosts and the sailors alike, and charged forward himself with Andúril before him. Ahead of all of them he ran down the enemy, and such was his strength of will and fury that she fully believed that the orcs would still have fled before him even if the Dead Army had not been there, after all.

Even as he raised his sword to overtake the first foe before him, Shëanon sprinted after Aragorn into the fray. For a moment it suddenly seemed it no longer mattered to her if she lived or died—all that mattered was doing everything she possibly could to fight this terrible evil. She remembered little Freda and imagined hundreds of children like her somewhere within the burning city, and Aedren who might already have been dead somewhere upon the blood-soaked ground, never to return to his wife and newborn daughter, and Merry and Pippin and Gandalf, and Boromir's dying breath—

The orcs nearest the docks had turned and fled at the sight of the ghosts, so these were killed by her sword through their backs, but eventually they came into the sea of evil servants, their countless legions, and many indeed were either unafraid of the Dead or were compelled by their masters to stand and do battle, and so Shëanon fought. Her wounds did not trouble her—the rage coursing through her veins was a strengthening elixir. Again and again she drove her blade into the monsters, moving more swiftly than she had ever before.

On the ground ahead of her, a soldier of Rohan had been knocked down and disarmed. Shëanon could not see who it was beneath his helm, but it didn't matter. His assailant had uplifted a jagged scimitar, and Shëanon dove forward to thrust her blade through the orc's throat. Even as it fell, another emerged and leapt to impale her on its pike, and she dodged aside and swept her blade in a ringing arc that severed its head from its neck.

On and on it went, and she was aware of little besides what was happening directly around her. She could see the hazy green of the ghosts out of the corner of her eye, but she could not afford to look and see how they were faring, or if they were winning, or if the Enemy was falling. She could only fight the next orc in her path, lest she fall to the ground with the corpses. Sometimes she encountered another of the Rohirrim, but never Merry, though at every turn she prayed to find him somehow unharmed.

"Foran! Foran!" a voice suddenly screamed, and though she could not understand the language of Rohan, Shëanon could easily understand what the frantic soldier was trying to say, for as she looked up and followed the line of his upraised spear, it was to see one of the mammoth oliphaunts charging toward them.

With a burst of dread, she sheathed her sword and took down her bow. The enraged animal seemed to be mad with terror and anger. A tower had been harnessed upon its back, and in it she could see many Haradrim men with bows and spears, raining arrows down upon the Rohirrim running below. A group of men standing directly behind the great beast's gigantic head tugged on thick reins, and seemed to command it by stabbing a long, hooked spike into the hide behind its neck until the creature screamed with agony under its long, serpent-like nose and turned where they willed it.

With her heart pounding out of her chest, Shëanon nocked and arrow and took aim for the hook-bearers first, shooting them down and then aiming for the archers in the tower. All of them she felled—they toppled from the great height of the animal's back, and if they were not dead from her arrows through their hearts and throats then they were certainly dead beneath the oliphaunt's feet, for even though its cruel masters were vanquished its rampage was not stopped, and even the orcs had fled its path lest they be caught by its sweeping tusks or crushed under its massive footfalls. Shëanon kept leaping aside, barely avoiding being stepped on herself, for the animal was blundering about in a craze. The Rohirrim brave enough to dare it stabbed spears at its trunk-like legs in an effort to cripple it, but this seemed only to incense the creature rather than slow it.

Shëanon swallowed a cry of dismay and drew another arrow, though she was heartbroken to do it. It was clear to her as it reared in pain and fright that this oliphaunt was unlike the wicked wargs sent by Saruman, and was much more alike to Hasufel and Arod than she might first have thought. Its thick skin was barely cut by the swords of the Rohirrim, and so she knew that her arrowheads would be wasted upon its gargantuan body. So then did Shëanon stand before it as it staggered and stamped closer and closer, and the ground shook beneath her feet, and as it bowed its head as though to swipe her with its sharp tusk, she loosed her arrow. It pierced the creature's eye and sank deep, and even as she watched it stumble and fall, diving away so it wouldn't fall upon her, her chest ached with pity. All over this animal was covered in wounds, and not all were fresh from the battle but old marks of scars deep in its grey hide, and when it finally crashed with an earth-quaking impact upon the ravaged ground, Shëanon prayed that she had done it a mercy, and wished she could have instead saved it.

Then before her, the ghosts swept past like a breaker, their phantasmal swords and spears aglow, and the orcs that were not fleeing fell like toppled trees beneath their wrathful onslaught. Their faces were horrendous to behold, their mouths open in an otherworldly battle cry, their vacant eyes like pits in their faces. As they surged around her Shëanon could sense centuries of fury and torture long-held at last released, and this they set upon the army of Mordor with merciless brutality.

She grimaced and grasped again for her sword, and only then did she realize she had lost sight of her companions as she'd slain the annabon. She had only just turned to seek Aragorn and Legolas in the fray when she heard it.

"SHEA!" a voice screamed, and she whirled to see Aragorn running at her, his eyes wide with horror, though she knew not why, not until—

There was a rush of air, as though from a terrible wind, and a high, hoarse screech shattered her eardrums. Shëanon spun, but it was too late. She had just the barest instant to see it bearing down upon her: the fell beast gaining, its great wings outstretched to their fullest expanse, its gaping mouth open wide and its red eyes gleaming as it sighted her, and on its back, clad all in black and vested in shadow, a cloaked, faceless Nazgûl.

Shëanon opened her mouth to shriek and lifted her sword, but the beast raised its head at the last moment and instead—

"Ah!"

All of the breath was driven from her lungs, and the force of the collision was so great that her sword fell from her hand. The world spun around her as she flailed in horror. The terrible creature's biting talons encircled her in an unbreakable hold, crushing her, and Shëanon kicked and screamed, panicking and shocked. In a moment of clarity she tried to reach the knife at her belt, thinking that maybe if she stabbed this monster it would let go, and that was when she looked down.

She could no longer see Aragorn. The battlefield was so far below that Minas Tirith itself was tiny, and the black ash and blowing wind roared in her ears and stung her eyes and stole her breath, and with a cry of terror she was sure that this beast would drop her and she would plummet the whole way—falling that terrible distance—

And then all was oblivion.

A/N:

*runs and hides*

What do you think?

xoxo Erin