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

36. Chapter 30 Part 2

Content Warning: This chapter contains imagery and themes that may be upsetting to some readers.

Aiër Chapter 29 Part 2

When the sun is low
When the shadows grow
When the stars forget to shine

When the road is long
When the world's all wrong
When your home is far behind

When our courage fails
And no strength prevails
When our doom is near at hand

When our shields shall break
And when men forsake
Their sworn oaths to lord and land

Will you take up the call?
Will you rise when you fall?
Will you keep on 'til the end?

Will you fight for the light?
Will you fight for what's right?
Will you stand by word and friend?

Who will come now through the darkness?
Who will come when hope is gone?
In the names of faith and fellowship
Through the dimness to the dawn?

Here at the last how will our long tale conclude?
Who will arise and see these dark days renewed?

XXX

The room around her seemed to lurch, the walls closing in. For one terrible moment she thought her legs would give way, and she would fall again upon the floor. The words echoed in her ears over and over.

Your father is Maglor Fëanorion.

Shëanon shook her head, but she knew, immediately, that it was true. Indeed, she suddenly felt as though she had known for a very long time, though she had not wanted to believe it. Again she heard the words of Saruman: You have the look of his accursed house.

She thought of what she had said to Legolas, that she feared they were still paying the price of the Silmarils, and for the evil deeds of Fëanor and his sons… She recalled the way Galadriel had looked at her that day in Lothlórien when she had gazed into the mirror, as though the Lady had seen some answer in her face…

Her ears were ringing, and her sweat was like an icy sheet over her skin.

"You cannot deny it even to yourself," Sauron observed coldly, watching her. "Long have I hunted the son of Fëanor, but his second spawn is not so easy to ensnare as his first. Imagine my astonishment, when rumor reached my spies of a child… A child whom Saruman the White was desperate to capture, a child hidden in Imladris under the protection of Elrond Eärendilion… A peredhel child who had appeared in secret… A child who, even as she stands before me, bears such resemblance to that wasted house I would have known it by her look alone."

Shëanon was breathing very heavily—her heart had never pounded so hard in her life. Hidden in Imladris. All her life she'd thought she'd been dumped at Elrond's door, unwanted. She looked down at the red end of her braid. She remembered Saruman's taunting sneer: Twice now have my servants failed to bring you before me.

Sauron was watching her with an utterly expressionless look on his face, like a cruel, unmoving mask, but his eyes seemed even brighter than before, as in the face of a carnivorous beast beholding the prey it would devour.

"Saruman revealed to me the sordid tale in all its entirety," he said. "He vowed to deliver you to me as proof of his allegiance—the daughter of Maglor, he promised me. Many were his falsehoods and schemes. He thought himself most cunning, but on this he spoke true. No longer need I seek the Fëanorion. His daughter I think will suffice. The bonds forged in blood are strong beyond the reckoning of your kind, and the blood of that house is stronger than most. It runs in your veins, and here you stand before me, a fount to drain as I will."

Shëanon's thoughts were so frantic and desperate she could hardly keep up with them. Her mind was racing, her hands violently shaking. Her sire was Maglor, the son of Fëanor. Celebrimbor who had forged the three Elven rings was her cousin. Sauron wanted to use her blood to tie those three rings to the One and bind their bearers to his will…

Suddenly she realized that what she said next was very, very important. The cacophony in her head was deafening and dizzying as she scrambled to think what to do—what to say.

Shëanon steeled herself, and looked back into the dreadful, corrupted face before her.

"Then still I was right," she rasped at last. Her voice trembled, but carried loud enough for him to hear.

Her palm was sweaty around the pommel of the sword.

"I'm of no use to you," she said.

The flame of Sauron's gaze seemed to flicker.

"Are you so slow-minded in your terror, child, that you heard nothing I spoke?" he asked.

Shëanon had never, ever been so afraid to speak.

"You said you would use my blood on the One Ring," she said. She drew in a deep breath. "But you do not have the One Ring."

There was a long, pregnant pause.

"You're too late," she continued. "You don't have the Ring. You've lost."

"Lost?" Sauron echoed darkly. "I have lost nothing, you foolish girl."

"It is as you feared," Shëanon said. She was thinking of the vision she had seen of Aragorn and Legolas and Gandalf, and their plan… If indeed they needed Sauron to meet them in battle, to clear the way for Frodo… "You know where the Ring is now. It has passed into the hands of Isildur's heir, who even now is gathering an army to him. If Maglor the son of Fëanor has eluded you, then so too has Aragorn, son of Arathorn. He too was hidden from you in Imladris. He too was raised by Elrond Peredhel. The Dúnedain of the North ride in all haste to his side even as we speak. The wardens of the Golden Wood have ridden forth from Lothlórien to his aid. Théoden of Rohan and all the Rohirrim have followed him to battle. The Dead Army of Dunharrow has sworn allegiance to him as the heir to the throne of Gondor, where the people have welcomed him back as their rightful king. All the Free Peoples of Middle-Earth unite behind him, and he has the Ring. His ancestor defeated you even without it! With it he will vanquish you easily. You have failed—"

With the force of what seemed to be twenty men at least, Sauron suddenly backhanded her across the face, and Shëanon was knocked off her feet. She landed so hard upon the floor several feet behind her that for an instant she was sure she must have cracked her head open. The sword fell from her hand and clattered uselessly across the chamber, and all the breath was driven from her lungs.

"Silence," Sauron commanded. His once composed voice was now unrecognizable in his wrath.

Shëanon wheezed and grit her teeth in agony.

"Kill me and take my blood if you will," she ground out, still trying to recover her breath. "A lot of good it will do you—"

"You think he could outwit me, that pathetic mortal son of exiled wanderers? He is heir to nothing but a diminished bloodline cowering in the wilderlands!"

"Saruman the White underestimated him, too!" Shëanon warned. "And met his demise!"

Beneath his skin, something in Sauron seemed suddenly to burn—as though through his veins coursed not blood but webs of molten metal or magma, and it showed glowing through his pale flesh like a mesh of lightning penetrating cloud.

"The heir of Isildur has spent his life hiding in fear of me!" he hissed.

On the floor, Shëanon at last managed to sit up. She attempted to push herself to her feet on trembling limbs.

"Aragorn isn't afraid of you!" she spat. "He has spent his life becoming all that you fear and all that you will never be!"

"He is mortal! He is naught but a presumptuous child grasping for greatness beyond his ilk, as weak and as worthless as all his forebears! His petty life is fleeting—failing—he will wither and die and pass into nothingness, you Noldor mutt—"

Hot fury suddenly coursed through her.

"Aragorn son of Arathorn is the greatest of Men!" she shouted. "It is you who is bound for nothingness! Go seek your master in the Void and lick his boots, sniveling leech!"

This time when she was knocked down, Sauron didn't so much as lift a finger. And yet though he had not moved, she found herself flung forcefully off her feet, and crashed yet again upon the floor so hard that it felt like she might have bruised every bone in her body. Stars erupted in her vision, and she hurriedly tried to blink them away and to rise, for remaining so vulnerable—flat on her back on the ground—was unthinkable. Groaning and clutching at her ribs, struggling to draw breath, she slowly wrenched herself once more to her feet, staggering and shaking.

She froze.

The face of Sauron was suddenly no longer angry. He was staring at her, and the corners of his mouth had twisted up into a cunning, joyless smile, and as she stood trembling, a terrible gleam of intent and satisfaction shone in his blazing eyes. Even her pain was momentarily forgotten as she realized this, her entire body tensing up in dread.

"My gain is greater than even I had first guessed," he said, while she remained rigid with fear. "Many may your uses be, beyond your ultimate purpose. Tell me, granddaughter of Fëanor, do you care for that son of squandered strength and fallen fathers?"

Shëanon clamped shut her mouth, her eyes wide with horror, and did not answer. Nothing good could come from such a question—she could tell by the look on his face that she had made a grave error—that somehow he would use her allegiance to Aragorn against her.

His immense footfalls seemed to shake the chamber as he paced closer to her.

"Do you love him?" he asked, still with that cold, malicious air of gratification.

Shëanon was too afraid to speak, and Sauron smirked.

"Much faith you have in him," he said knowingly. "How much faith has he afforded you in turn, I wonder? You have been long in his company. Were you held also in his confidence? I think it so. It was from his side that you were wrested at the very moment you passed into my hand, was it not? You know his mind. Do you know, too, his designs and devices?"

Oh no. Shëanon's panic spiked to such a height that her vision suddenly darkened at the edges, and she truly feared she would pass out. Her pulse in her ears was deafening. Her mouth grew so dry she couldn't swallow.

If Sauron planned to interrogate her for information…

She knew enough to doom the whole world.

"Let us see how quickly you will betray him," Sauron said, when she remained silent.

Her heaving chest was pierced by sharp denial and resolve.

"I will never betray him," she hissed.

But Sauron didn't even have the grace to appear skeptical—she might as well not have spoken, for all the effect it had on him—as though this were so impossible to him that it was not even worth consideration or response.

"A Halfling my servants have caught and captured at Cirith Ungol," he said instead. "Little doubt do I have that this trespasser was sent by the heir of Elendil, but what his errand was, I cannot yet see."

Shëanon's heart stopped. Frodo! She could feel that she must have gone stark white, and knew that her horror must have shown on her face, but there could be no helping it. Frodo had been caught!

But no, she realized, it could not have been Frodo, for Sauron did not have the Ring.

Her insides felt like ice.

Sam.

"You know of what I speak—dear to you is this creature, I deem."

Frantically, Shëanon shook her head.

"Foolish beyond even my imagining is your mortal friend, to entrust any task to so witless and worthless a beast as these imps he seems to favor. Tell me, peredhel, what was the charge laid upon the blundering wretch, ere it met its doom?"

She was trembling so badly that she knew he could see it. She had to calm herself—she had to convince him—

"I don't know," she managed to whisper.

"Lie," Sauron declared. "And a poor lie, indeed. Your eyes betray you. One more chance shall I give you to speak, Magloriell, and if you speak the truth, I shall not order death upon the Halfling. What was its errand?"

At these words she felt her heart blacken—but she could not do it. Not even if it would mean Sam's death.

"I don't know!" she insisted.

Suddenly, before her eyes, a figure appeared on the floor. He lay flat on his back, his limbs splayed and stiff. The light of his noble spirit was extinguished, his eyes blank and empty as they stared up out of his pale, pallid face. His clothes were scarlet with the blood of many wounds upon him, and the shafts of several arrows emerged from his chest, which did not rise and fall with breath but which was utterly still, for he lay dead before her, his once strong body crumpled and wasted, his life spent.

Shëanon heard herself shriek in shock and agony, and she fell to her knees before Aragorn's feet.

"NO!" she screamed. The chamber around her seemed to spin. She couldn't breathe—it was as though she were the one who had been pierced by the arrows, as though she were the one whose heart and lungs had been punctured. Her hands flew up to cover her mouth as she gazed at him in horror and disbelief—at the gruesome gashes and slashes that cut him, his body mangled and marked by horrible suffering—at his dead, unseeing eyes—his beloved face vacant, his soul gone. How could this be—how had this happened? She felt that her entire world had been shattered, and that her soul must surely leave her, too, as she screamed his name in desperation and grief—it couldn't be true, it couldn't be true—Aragorn—

Then, just as suddenly, he was gone, and the black floor where he had lain was unmarked and glimmered in the dim light.

Shëanon choked and stared at the empty floor in bewilderment, her face wet with her sudden tears, her chest heaving around her confounded, gasping sobs. Then she looked up at the face of Sauron, and she understood.

"That will be his fate soon enough. I think you forget, child, where you are and whom you seek to deceive. Let us try again. What was the Halfling's errand?"

"I don't know—I don't know—"

An awful, slicing pain split her skin, and Shëanon cried out and fell forward onto her hands and knees.

'Disobedient brat! Worthless—unnatural—beast!'

She couldn't see the floor, nor the chamber, nor anything else—she was a little girl, naked, struggling, shrieking, as her master struck her again and again. The whip cracked as he brought it down upon her back, and Shëanon was screaming—begging—weeping—

'Filthy half-breed! Ungrateful curse! I'll show you pain!'

"Stop!" she cried, struggling futilely. "Stop, Master! I'll be good—I promise—!"

But again the whip struck, lashing her tender skin, rending her aching, ripping flesh, and she cried and cried and pleaded and wailed—

Then she felt it. As when she had first touched the Ring with her mind on the eve of the council in Imladris, there came suddenly an onslaught of renewed agony. She felt like there were knives in her mind, like her mind was besieged even as Helm's Deep and Minas Tirith had been besieged—as though some battering ram had been taken to her skull, a terrible pressure, and still the voice of her master, and the whip. She pressed her hands to her head, gasping in anguish—

And then it stopped.

Shëanon opened her eyes and found herself curled upon the icy floor, her clothes drenched in sweat, her entire body shaking. Though she knew that it had been only in her mind, still she could feel the phantom pain of the whip, like her back was on fire, and she whimpered against the black stone beneath her.

She glanced back up at Sauron in stunned dread. It had been him—him in her head, attempting to pillage and search, to force and compel…

"Your suffering is needless," he said cruelly. "And your pride is pointless. You will reveal the truth in the end—your will cannot withstand mine. Would you yield to it now, or must we continue while you bend and founder until you break beneath it? Spare yourself from further trial, peredhel, and dispense now with your lies."

Shëanon squeezed closed her eyes even before she spoke, because she knew what was coming.

"I'm not lying! I don't know why he was there—AH!"

A hundred red-hot pokers were being laid against her bare skin. She writhed, her skin blistering, and again, there came the tremendous, unbearable force that was Sauron attempting to pry into her thoughts and find the answer she was withholding. Shëanon grit her teeth even as she shrieked with pain, her eyes screwed shut, her whole body bowing upon the floor. She couldn't let him—she couldn't let him—

She could see her master's eyes—hateful and grievous—glaring down at her in blind rage as she was burned again and again—

Again it ended, and again Shëanon found herself huddled on the ground, gasping for air, with tears leaking from the corners of her eyes. She was shaking so hard that her teeth were chattering, and her throat was raw from her screams.

"So much suffering," Sauron said. "So much fear and pain in you. Your mind is full to bursting with it. What say you? Shall I mine every last shred of torment from the very depths of your memory? Shall I leverage every dread? Shall I pry loose and expose your every living thought until I find what I seek, and you are left naked and destroyed, a fragmented dreg of severed will and dark dreams? Mere moments of this you have endured, and already you lie cowering and mewling piteously before me. I can go on for hours without count or measure, child, and I will."

Shëanon trembled.

"I don't know why the Halfling was here," she gasped.

Sauron appraised her in silence for a moment.

"Critical is this knowledge, I think," he said, "that you would endure such pains to protect it."

This time it was Elrond's dead body she suddenly saw upon the floor, his head severed from his shoulders, while she shrieked and tried to weather the excruciating assault upon her mind.

Again and again he asked her. Again and again came the lash, or the poker. Again and again she saw Aragorn dead, or her father dead, or Elladan or Elrohir or Arwen dead, and each time his will was upon her, his mind grasping, drilling, seeking, while she strained and fought to keep him out. She felt as though the very fabric of her mind were tearing, as though she were fracturing under the effort of barring him from it. And as she was whipped and burned and tortured, it was harder and harder to withstand him, harder to concentrate and keep her thoughts away from the clawing fingers that tore at her consciousness. Sauron doubled down, the images becoming worse and worse, her defenses wavering. She could feel more and more of herself beginning to fall through the cracks, like her mind was a vessel in which he was puncturing holes, and her thoughts water trickling through.

Suddenly the torture changed, and while her master restrained her and seared her flesh with the branding iron, she could see Legolas standing before her. She locked eyes with him as she was burned, as she screamed and flailed, and his face was unlike she had ever seen it. He gazed back at her in disgust and disdain, his arms crossed over his chest, his eyes harder and darker than the black stone of the tower.

'Again,' he said hatefully to her master. 'She deserves it.'

Shëanon heard herself wailing.

'This is all her fault.'

It's not real, she told herself desperately, but she could feel herself slip, distracted and horrified, and some part of her give. Sauron's fingers were sinking deeper.

All of a sudden there was no whip. There was no burning poker. Instead the chamber around her melted, and she saw a dark dungeon. A person was in chains, but it was not her.

Legolas was bound to a rack, his arms and legs restrained. He was naked to the waist. Two orcs on either side of him were cutting him with jagged blades, slicing his skin, wounding and maiming him while he clamped shut his jaw in a terrible effort not to cry out.

Shëanon shrieked. Every mark upon him she seemed to feel upon her own skin, in her own heart, the sight of his pain and torture unbearable—unthinkable. She screamed so loudly that she tasted blood, consumed by anguish.

"Stop!" she screamed. "Stop! Stop! STOP!"

And it stopped.

Shëanon lay gasping for breath, her face soaked with sweat and tears. Hair that had come loose from her braid was plastered to her wet skin, and she was shivering and whimpering.

Distantly she could feel the floor beneath her ear rumbling, and black armored boots appeared before her eyes.

"The son of Thranduil, I think," Sauron said as he stood over her. "Shall I bid my servants find him next and bear him hither? Would you like it, half-elf, to watch him torn limb from limb? That is what this defiance will buy you."

Shëanon sobbed. She believed him.

But it didn't matter.

"I will never tell you anything," she choked.

"Then I shall wring it from your weak and wavering mind."

How long it lasted, she would never know. The torment went on and on. He rattled and tortured her with appalling, unspeakable images of death and suffering. He made her relive the worst moments of her life. And in her horror it was easier and easier for him to delve deeper and deeper into her mind, finding new fodder for the fire. Shëanon felt that she was at the battle of Helm's Deep once more, when the fortress had been taken and they had been barred inside the innermost chamber without hope. She had retreated into the deepest most recesses of her mind. She had ceded everything to Sauron—everything except that most crucial secret:

Frodo was trying to destroy the Ring.

She felt that she lay huddled around it, clutching it to her chest, while around her raged a furious, relentless storm of suffering and attack—while Sauron sifted through her thoughts and memories—shielding it with her body and soul, but he had been right: she was weak, and she was wavering, and she could not hold him off.

She clenched her teeth against a scream. She felt that she was being unmade, that she was tearing at the seams, that her will was in tatters. She couldn't do it—she couldn't do it—

"I'll tell you!" she shrieked, as she bowed and writhed in agony. "I'll tell you! I'll tell you the truth!"

The pain let up, and the assault paused, and Shëanon lay weeping at Sauron's feet.

"Some sense at last," he murmured calmly.

Shëanon sobbed.

"I will tell you if you do not kill the hobbit!" she begged him. Indeed, if she could at least save Sam…

"You are in no position to make demands of me, peredhel."

Shëanon cringed upon the floor.

"You said—you said you would not order his death if I spoke the truth," she implored him. Her voice wavered so much it was barely audible.

But above her Sauron seemed to consider.

"So I did," he agreed after a moment. His eyes were like glittering rubies in his face, bright with pleasure and victory. "Very well. I am not unjust. I reward those who serve me. Tell me the truth, and I will not command an end to his pathetic life."

Her breath shuddered out of her, and she balled her hands into fists.

"Aragorn—Aragorn plans an attack," she stammered. "He will—he will lay siege upon the Morannon."

As she spoke, Shëanon clove desperately to one single thought: the moment in her vision when she had seen Aragorn point at the map and announce his plan to his companions. 'We will amass all our power at the Black Gate.' She thought it again and again, just that one instant. 'We will amass all our power at the Black Gate.'

"That is the truth," she said.

And it was the truth.

'We will amass all our power at the Black Gate. We will amass all our power at the Black Gate. We will amass all our power at the Black Gate…'

Suddenly Sauron laughed.

"The heir of Elendil plans an invasion, and sends a simple-minded varmint as his spy?"

In a heap upon the floor, Shëanon didn't dare speak. Her eyes were still screwed shut, her brow furrowed with concentration. 'We will amass all our power at the Black Gate.' She didn't dare think of anything else, but offered up this image and let Sauron draw what conclusions he would.

Suddenly something touched her, and she gasped and opened her eyes as the toe of Sauron's boot struck her shoulder. He kicked her over, so that she lay on her back before him, and he loomed over her like he might crush her underfoot.

She flinched in fear.

"Celebrimbor even in greatest torment would not yield to me, nor reveal whither the Three had been sent," he told her. "He perished sooner than betray their keepers. And here you lie, reduced to begging and surrender so swiftly even I am surprised. Weakest of all your kin do I name you, half-elf. I wonder if it is the mortal blood that dilutes the inherited strength of your forebears, or simply a matter of faint-hearted cowardice. Let us hope it is the latter, else I may yet have need of Maglor after all. When he comes to barter for his daughter's life, I shall be sure to tell him that she is a shame upon his house. Learn this lesson well, child: I am the highest power in Middle-Earth—your king, your judge, and your doom. And you, Shëanon Peredhel, are nothing."

Then, as she lay in tears and terror, he strode away without another glance.

"I will honor my word. I will not order my servants to kill the miserable Halfling. If they should choose to kill him of their own will, however, it is no concern of mine."

He paced to an immense throne at the far side of the chamber, which was blacker than night and seemed to stretch all the way to the ceiling.

"Remove her."

XXX

The two guards seized her under the arms and dragged her unceremoniously from the chamber. They did not gag her again or set her hands back into the manacles, but it was clear that they didn't need to. Shëanon had not even the strength to lift her head as she was bodily hauled back through the tower, much less to walk or indeed to fight. She stumbled and staggered all the way, her vision blurred by her tears, her entire body tense with pain and with fear and exhaustion. Her head hurt so badly that she was practically blind with the agony as the men's fingers dug into her biceps. She was violently shivering, her sweat freezing on her skin, and no matter how hard she tried, she still felt as though she couldn't breathe. As she was half-carried through Barad-dûr, Men and orcs alike jeered and laughed at her, some sneering demeaning insults as she was brought past, others applauding the sight of her anguish, and some still walking by in utter silence, as though her torture were no more noteworthy than an insect upon the floor.

The men dragging her suddenly halted and rapped upon an iron door, and Shëanon looked up blearily as she was drawn into a guard chamber. On a table, set out all in a row, she saw her cloak, her bow and quiver, and her belt and dagger, but she couldn't even muster the strength to feel outrage or disgust that her weapons would pass into the hands of her foes.

The guards brought her down a long, dark corridor lined on both sides by barred, locked cell doors, until finally they came to one that stood open. Shëanon was shoved forcefully inside, and she fell upon the ground the moment they unhanded her. She groaned and would not have risen, but the men each caught one of her wrists and hoisted her back up. They lifted her arms over her head and shackled them together in chains hung from the wall, so that she sat slumped on the floor with her hands manacled above her.

She didn't resist. She didn't even look at them. She just prayed they would leave rather than introduce her to some new nightmare.

Then one of the men knelt directly before her and leaned close, and when she did not lift her gaze to meet his, he caught her face in a biting grip and forced her head up.

It was the one who had first been there when she had awoken, the one she had struck and whose sword she had stolen, and his dark eyes were shining as he beheld her, chained in the cell.

"Not so mouthy now," he breathed. "Now which of us is the coward? When the Dark Lord regains dominion over all the land, my faithfulness will be rewarded, she-elf. I will be a king among Men, and I will beg him spare you when your usefulness to him is spent. Much pleasure will it bring me to put you in your place. Then we shall see who is above whom—and indeed, who is beneath whom."

A sick feeling churned inside her, but she could do nothing but glare weakly as he dug his fingers in against her jawbone. Then, with one last look of contempt, he rose and followed his fellow out of the cell.

The cell door closed behind him, and she heard the turn of a key in a lock. His footsteps faded away, and Shëanon was alone. The cell was utterly dark and cold but for a furnace at the far side that glowed so dimly it gave no heat and hardly any light, and she sat still for a moment in her chains and realized her vision had come true at last.

Then, and only then, did she bow her head and weep.

Shëanon cried for a long time. Her entire body was hurting. Her ribs were throbbing, her head splitting from the force of Sauron's knocking her down and with the mental strain she had endured, attempting to resist him. The shock and horror of his illusions had not left her—as though the images had been burned into her eyes, she could still see the lifeless bodies of her father and Aragorn and her brothers. She could still see Legolas enduring the awful torture. She could still feel the hurts of the whip and of the hot iron upon her skin as though her master really had been there, tormenting her. But most of all, she cried because she was afraid.

What would happen now? It was true that she had managed to deceive Sauron for a moment, but she knew this was only the most meager relief. Surely he would want to question Sam and confirm her story, before he let his orcs devour him? She felt ill. Sam wouldn't be able to confirm her story. What then? Would Sauron get it out of him—the Ring, the quest, the mission? She knew Sam would never willingly betray Frodo, but if Sauron wrenched into his mind, as he had hers? It seemed certain that Frodo would be caught, and they would lose, and all would be lost.

Her sobs echoed around the cell.

It was worse than she had ever dreamed. Not even on the night after they had left Isengard, when she had made herself ill worrying over the wicked words of Saruman, had she imagined something like this. Of every frightful possibility she had considered after that terrifying encounter, this was far worse. Her sire was Maglor, the kinslayer? Her grandfather was Fëanor, her heritage that treacherous house of murderers, her birthright curse and damnation? And she was the key to the Enemy's ultimate victory?

A sob came up from so deep within her that it hurt.

If Sauron regained the One Ring, he would use her blood upon it, and then what? Would her father and Gandalf and Galadriel be corrupted as even the kings of Men had been by their own rings? Would they pass into the shadows, as wraiths? She felt that there would be no hope left for Middle-Earth if such a thing were to happen, if such powerful beings as those three were bound to the will of Sauron, and the thought of her father becoming a slave of evil, doomed to serve the Dark Lord and do his bidding, made her so nauseous that she thought she would vomit. Her entire body was wracked by her gasps of panic and despair, and she could see nothing through her tears.

It was her fault, she realized. She should have gone back with him when he had warned her. She should have listened to him. She had been foolish, to think that she could help Aragorn and Legolas and Gimli—to think she could make any difference. If she had gone back to Imladris as Elrond had begged, none of this would be happening. Shëanon squeezed closed her eyes and felt more tears roll down her cheeks.

She was going to die in this tower, she realized. After Sauron regained the Ring and used her blood, one way or another she would surely die. It would have been one thing, she thought, to fall in battle at Helm's Deep or at Minas Tirith, doing all that she could to save the lives of innocent people, but it seemed a different thing entirely to die alone in anguish and desolation after dooming everyone she loved to fates worse than death.

She drew in her knees and tried to lay her head upon them, but with her hands chained above her, she could not reach. She was not even afforded the chance for this one act of comfort—alone and terrified, away from the arms of all who might have held her, she could not even curl up or hold herself.

Shëanon bit down so hard on her lip that she tasted blood.

She would never see Legolas again. The force of her tears was renewed. She had never even told him that she loved him, and now she would go to Mandos without ever having spoken the words. Why had she never said it? Was it because she was a coward, as that guard had said? As Sauron had said? Shëanon was crying so hard that she could scarcely draw breath.

She thought again of her vision of Minas Tirith, and of the company's plan, and of what she had told Sauron. There would be a battle at the Black Gate, just as Aragorn had planned, but they didn't know that Sam had been captured, and that Frodo's discovery was imminent. Everyone was going to die, and it would all be for nothing. Again she saw Aragorn's dead body, only now, though she tried to stop it, she could not help but to envision the arrows piercing into his chest, or the orcs cutting him with their wicked blades as he futilely fought and failed and fell. She imagined Gimli and Gandalf dying. She imagined Merry and Pippin dying, and realized with a jolt that she did not even know if they had survived the battle of the Pelennor Fields. They had not been in the chamber with the others when she had had her vision.

She imagined Legolas's dead body trampled by orcs at the gates of Mordor, and felt for a moment that she would die. Maybe that was best. Maybe she would die of her heartbreak, and at the very least, Sauron would not be able to ensnare Nenya, Narya, and Vilya.

It was all over.

A guard passed by her cell, but she didn't even look at him. She didn't care if he could see her tears. She was grieving for everyone she had ever known, for everyone she had ever loved, for the world she had fought so desperately to save, and for the future she would never see, and she grieved for herself…

Shëanon thought of the morning she had left Imladris. She had never meant to hurt anyone. She had only wanted to help.

A bleak draft was seeping into her cell, and she shivered.

Her tears ran uninhibited down her face and neck and dampened her clothes. Her cries vanished into the gloom. Shëanon shook her head, sniffling. Cold and hurting and all alone in the dark, her wrists and arms aching in the manacles, her body and mind battered, she leaned back her head against the rough stone wall. Desperate for solace, for any reprieve from this consuming grief, however small or brief, she closed her eyes, drew a deep breath, and thought of Legolas.

She thought of the moment she had first seen him. He had been so handsome and noble in the morning light, how he had agilely dismounted his horse in the courtyard and addressed her father, and how kind and gallant and fair he had been when he'd turned to her. He had kissed her hand. From that very moment, her heart had been lost. The rest had been inevitable. She had never—never—stood a chance.

She remembered standing with him in the moonlit glade, when he had gazed down into her face and made his feelings known.

She remembered going to him in the gentle night of Edoras, and how he had eased all her worries with his compassion and understanding, and how he had kissed her as though he had never desired anything more than the touch of her lips.

An ache more powerful than any other rushed through her at the memory.

She thought of the night they had sparred together in the twilight, and his glittering eyes and laughter—how he had caught her as they'd fallen into the grass, and she had drawn the Lady's knife—

In the darkness of her cell, in the utter silence, Shëanon went rigid.

The Lady's knife.

Her heart staggered in her chest.

The mithril dagger that she had been gifted in Lothlórien, the one she had drawn in the hall of Meduseld while Gandalf had released Théoden from thralldom, the one she had used to trick Legolas in their spar…

For a single moment she sat wide-eyed and still, not daring to breathe—not daring to move. Then, very slowly, she drew her knee closer again and turned her leg. She peered down. There, just visible as she gazed down into her boot, she could see the handle of the knife glinting against the side of her shin, strapped as it ever was around her calf.

She felt her breath quicken. The orcs who had searched her had been so busy fantasizing about eating her that after all her visible weapons had been removed and after they had groped over all the places they had seemed to imagine would be the most appetizing, they had not thought to check inside her shoes.

Shëanon glanced nervously toward the door of the cell, but she could see no one, and even straining her ears, she could hear no movement anywhere close by. Her stomach flipped, and she began to tremble again for an entirely new reason. Her pulse was rushing in her ears. She knew, immediately, what she had to do. A plan formed in her mind—a desperate, reckless plan…

She had to try.

As silently as she could, Shëanon twisted her hands around to grasp the chains attached to her manacles. Her arms were aching from being held for so long over her head, and she grit her teeth. Slowly—so slowly—she leveraged one foot against the ground and kicked her other leg up into the air. A piercing pain tore through her ribs, and she hissed, but kept stretching. Sweat burst over her brow as she clung to her chains and drew her ankle up toward her hands, and twisting and straining, she was just flexible enough. She released the chain held in her right hand and caught her boot instead. She huffed, grasped under the edge, and let her leg fall.

Shining in the dim light of the furnace, clean and bright, clutched tight between her fingers, was the mithril knife.

Shëanon released a breath of sharp emotion, and at once, craned her head back to see what she was doing. She slotted the end of the knife into the keyhole on the left manacle, jimmying it and turning, and after a few minutes, to her utter amazement, she succeeded in picking the lock, and the manacle came open. At once she took the knife in her left hand and set about freeing her right, and though it took longer, for her left hand was clumsier, as she bit her lip and rattled the knife, the lock clicked, and she was free of her chains.

Shëanon let her arms fall, and stared at the knife in astonishment and disbelief.

Then an urgent rush stole over her, and, frantic, she staggered to her feet. Pain gathered in her arms from the blood rushing back into them, but she hardly noticed as she hastened to the door of the cell, intent on picking that lock, too. The padlock to the cell door however must have been on the outside, and there was no way to open it from within; there was not even a handle with which to pull the door open. For an instant, her heart sank.

Then a grim thought occurred to her. She stood for a moment deliberating, and made up her mind.

Holding the knife at the ready, she moved to press herself against the wall beside the door, in the shadows, and stood waiting and trembling in terror and anticipation.

She would only have one chance. If she failed—if it didn't work—she would at best be returned to her chains, and the knife would be seized.

At worst, she would be tortured again.

Shëanon stood shaking from head to toe, so nervous that she was dizzy, and her mouth was dry. She dared not make a sound, but she uplifted her thoughts in a desperate prayer to Manwë, and to Varda, and to Ilúvatar himself, just one word over and over again, for it was all she could manage in her fear: please please please please…

The moments lengthened. She could hardly stand it.

Then, finally, after what seemed an age, when the weight of her fear and desperation seemed to reach an impossible height, she heard footsteps coming down the passage.

Her fingers tightened around the handle of the knife, and she pressed herself as deep into the corner as she could, out of sight, and held her breath.

The footsteps drew closer and closer. By their weight and cadence, she knew it was a Man. She could hear him breathing. He was right beside the door.

He gasped.

There was a jangle of metal. The man swore, and then the door to her cell was thrown open, and he burst inside.

Immediately, Shëanon leapt behind him, clamped her left hand over his mouth, and used her right to cut his throat.

At once there came a rush of his blood, and a sickening gurgle that turned her stomach, and she felt his body go rigid. Shëanon strained to hold him upright rather than let him fall to the floor, worried of making too much noise, but he was much bigger than she was, and heavy, and though she succeeded in slowing it, he crumpled to the ground.

Shëanon stepped back and looked down upon him as he bled to death. For a single moment, she stood rooted to the spot in shock, her hand slipping around the handle of the knife, his blood scarlet upon the blade. In the light of the furnace, she saw his face.

It was the man who had brought her before Sauron.

Panting and horrified, she bent and seized the end of his cloak, hastily wiped her knife, and then hurriedly seized his body under the arms and heaved him, with great effort, up against the wall where she had just been sitting. She clamped his wrists in the manacles, hoping that anyone passing by would spare only a glance and might not at first realize that the wrong prisoner occupied the cell—anything to buy her even a moment.

Shëanon looked once more at the man. His black raiment was saturated with blood, which stained her clothes, too. His eyes were staring but saw nothing. He was dead.

Her stomach roiled with revulsion, but she knew she couldn't linger. With her heart pounding out of her chest, she bounded for the door and peered cautiously out; no one was there. Shëanon closed the door, breathed another pleading prayer, and made a run for it, tearing out of the cell and down the dark corridor back to the guard chamber with fear like fire in her veins. Swiftly and silently, she gained the guard post and sprinted for the table in the corner.

Her gear was still set there in a pile, and her hands shook as she hastened to clasp on her Lórien cloak, strap on her bow and quiver, and buckle her belt. Only the empty sheath of her sword did she leave behind, for she had dropped the blade on the Pelennor Fields when the Nazgûl had caught her.

Then and only then, when she had drawn up her hood and clutched the knife still, did she pause. Once she passed out of this dungeon, she was not certain what she would find. When she had been lead to Sauron's throne room, many men and orcs she had seen lurking around every corner.

Shëanon pressed a hand to her mouth, striving desperately for calm. This was the part of her plan that she most doubted—it seemed a nigh impossible feat to navigate through the tower and escape without being seen. Gandalf had even told the others that it could not be done.

She knew a way that she could do it. It was only that she wasn't sure if it would work—she had never succeeded—never, no matter how hard she had tried.

A noise sounded on the other side of the door, and Shëanon jumped and ducked at once into a dark corner, crouching down out of sight—shaking and overcome by fear and hesitation. Panic and uncertainty fell over her like a dark cloud, and tears came again to her eyes. She couldn't do this. She would be caught, and perhaps whipped this time in real life, not just by an illusion in her mind—and she would remain a prisoner, and Sauron would use her blood, and Galadriel and Gandalf and her father, unsuspecting, would fall prey to the corrupting power of their rings—

She quailed.

Then suddenly, as clear as day, she heard Gandalf's voice in her mind, as he had spoken before the stables of Edoras.

'The hour draws near when we shall each be tested, and if any one of us should fail, I fear the doom of our time may be decided.'

Shëanon somehow knew, in her heart, that this was the moment. If she didn't escape, the consequences would be dire. This was surely her test, and she would fail it.

But…

She saw again the face of her father, standing in Théoden's tent—his creased face somber, his gaze piercing. What had he told her?

'Cast aside your doubt, or in doubt you will fall. No sword or strength may serve without faith, nor faithless power prevail.'

Shëanon's heart beat faster than ever. Cast aside your doubt, he had said…

She heard Arwen's voice whispering in her ear on the morning she had left Rivendell, when her sister had enfolded her in an embrace.

'If ever there is doubt in your mind, remember that I believe in you.'

A tremor coursed through her.

She was standing in golden Lothlórien before Lady Galadriel, prepared to leave in the boats.

'You are stronger than you think, Daughter of Elrond. Do not doubt your heart, and do not underestimate your own mind. You have power greater than you realize.'

She was on the plains of Rohan, in the scarlet sunset, and Aragorn had grasped her shoulder.

'I have faith in you.'

Abruptly Shëanon grit her teeth, and stood up. Her grip upon the Lady's knife was so tight that her knuckles stood out stark white upon her hand. Perhaps Aragorn and Legolas could not pass unnoticed through the dungeons of Barad-dûr, but she could, and she would do it, she thought fiercely.

Shëanon drew a deep breath. Cast aside your doubt. She thought about every moment that she had failed—every moment of frustration and insecurity. Do not doubt your heart, and do not underestimate your own mind. She knew, at last, why all those hours in the grass with Aragorn had not served her, why she had never succeeded, and she knew, now—finally, certainly—that she would.

'It is myself that I doubt,' she had told Legolas, those weeks ago in her room in Edoras, lying on the fur rug. 'Foresight is for High Elves like Lord Elrond and Lady Galadriel, not for blundering children like me.'

'It matters not if you are Noldor or Sindar or Sylvan, nor if you come from farmers or kings, Shëanon. It is your spirit that is important—your actions and choices.'

The understanding was powerful and earthshaking.

No sword or strength may serve without faith, nor faithless power prevail.

Shëanon knew what her choice was, now.

She closed her eyes.

And she stretched out with her Sight.

XXX

At once, she could feel them. As her eyes could see, as her ears could hear, even as she could sense the fëar of the Elves around her with her own, she could sense in her mind the minds of the others nearby. Like pricks of light in the darkness—like stars in a night sky—she could feel them, some close and loud and immediate, and others far off and remote. Approaching and fading, she could perceive them.

Her breath left her.

Tentatively, she pushed farther. She touched the closest mind. Immediately, she flinched and shuddered, for she could hear his hideous thoughts and she could feel the dark nature of his being. It was an orc, and its thoughts were rank with hatred and fear, and it was longingly fantasizing about hurting her. Shëanon grimaced with disgust, but—but she could see, as she touched his mind, what he saw and where he was.

Eru, she thought.

Her brow knit with concentration, and she found another mind. One of the Men. She could see where he was, too.

She waited until they passed out of view of the door behind which she stood, and the further away they went, the fainter their minds seemed to become.

Shëanon pressed her hand over her mouth, stricken with amazement and awe.

She could do it, she realized with a burst of courage and determination. All she needed to do was make sure no one saw her, and if she could sense their approach—if she could See—she could avoid their paths.

She opened her eyes.

"Valar, protect me," she whispered, shaking from head to toe.

Slowly she reached out and drew open the door, and the passageway beyond was as empty as she had expected it to be. Terrified, Shëanon slipped out of the guard chamber and ran as fast as she could down the corridor, still casting about frantically with her Sight.

At the end of the corridor she paused, for she could feel someone coming, and glancing into his mind she could see that it was another of the guards, and he was about to round the corner ahead of her. Shëanon darted into a chamber to her left, clutching the Lady's knife with violently trembling fingers, until the man passed. Then she silently passed back into the hall and around the corner.

On like this she went, through the many levels and passages, down many stairs, reaching out with her mind. She kept her cloak drawn closely about herself and her hood pulled over her head, and she ran as she had never before run. The darkness was an advantage. She kept to the shadows, avoiding the light of the torches to keep from being seen. Each time she sensed one of Sauron's servants drawing near, she ducked into another of the dark rooms off the winding passageways, or around a bend. More than once she had to wait, holding her breath, just around a corner as an Orc or Man passed through an intersecting corridor, and once, as she had fled down a twisting flight of steps, there had been a man coming behind and one coming ahead.

Shëanon had frozen in horror, trapped between them with nowhere to go. She knew she could take down her bow and try to shoot them, but she feared it would raise an alarm if she left a trail of bodies in her wake. Instead she had jumped to huddle beside one of the wide, dark pedestals that stood in intervals along the steps. Upon it was a heavy iron bracket holding a torch, and she crouched in the deep shadow behind it, drawing in her legs as close as possible, and ducked her head.

The footsteps of the Men echoed up and down the stairs from both directions, and she held her breath, praying, listening anxiously to their thoughts and ready to spring up with her knife at the barest thought of suspicion—

But though she could see them, they did not see her, crouching in the tenebrous gloom that festered in the tower, and as she watched on in dread, the two men crossed each other directly before the torch, and passed by her without a second glance.

Shëanon decided in that moment that if she ever saw Celeborn and Galadriel again, she would fall prostrate before their feet and pledge them her love and loyalty forever, and then she rose and continued down the stairs, gripping her mithril knife from Galadriel in one hand, and the edge of her shielding Lórien cloak in the other.

She couldn't have said how long it took her. Maybe it was but an hour. Maybe it was ten. All she could do was focus on the next obstacle and the next, concentrating as hard as she could on her Sight, desperately scouring the surround for the minds of any creature that might apprehend or hinder her. The toll this took was exhausting, and the enduring panic as she crept through the tower was wearing. The windows were so high and narrow that she could not see out to gauge how high up she yet was nor how far she still had to go, but eventually—finally—using the minds of her foes to guide her—she found the way out.

She stood frozen in a dark stairwell, shaking. On the next level—at the bottom of the stair—she could feel the minds of what must have been hundreds of orcs crowded into an immense, cavernous hall. She touched one of their minds, and saw for a moment a great throng of the monsters—so many that she felt ill—and a massive, towering doorway on one end manned by guards. In the middle of the hall the floor vanished, and an immense chasm could be seen. In it down below the ground level were many more floors—many levels teeming with orcs, and down in the darkness shone the raging fires of forges and furnaces as the vile creatures worked to serve their master. It seemed the bowels of the tower were where most of the orcs dwelled, but the doorway at the far side of the hall stood open to a black night.

In frenzied dismay, Shëanon faltered and worried on the stairs, wiping sweat from her brow and thinking frantically. She didn't have her sword. She surely did not have enough arrows left to prevail against hundreds of orcs, and even if she did, the second she shot one, she would surely be overtaken by the rest. She dithered and clutched at her temples. Even if she did somehow manage to evade capture by the orcs in the great hall below, she would be caught at once if they saw her fleeing. She would have to try to outrun hundreds of them on foot across the wastes of Mordor, and she knew she could not. Once they saw her, the alarm would be sounded, and probably the Nazgûl would be sent after her, so that it would not even matter if she managed to outrun the orcs for a short time.

"Think!" she hissed to herself. She was so close. She had made it all the way through the tower. The doorway was not one hundred paces from the bottom of the stairs.

She needed a diversion. She needed—

'Cannot your father and Lady Galadriel make their thoughts known to each other, and speak into the minds of any that they choose?'

'You think it was my dream.'

Shëanon released a breath. Valar, oh Valar.

If she could make the orcs see something else, as Sauron had made her see so many awful things… She hesitated. This wasn't just sensing, now, this wasn't merely reaching out with her Sight. Could she possibly—could she put an image into the minds of the orcs?

Her stomach was churning, and she knew that every moment she stood deliberating in the stairwell was another moment that she could be discovered and returned to her cell. Casting an illusion was not something she had ever considered, and she had no idea how to even try to do it… And yet, Legolas had thought she had done it even in her sleep! If she could show him her dream, could she not show these orcs something, too?

Shëanon crouched upon the stairs and held her head in her hands, trying to slow her labored breath. There were just so many of them… Surely she could not deceive them all at once. She didn't even know if she could trick one!

But I only need to trick one, she realized suddenly, with a jolt of inspiration. Just one.

Her pulse was racing. She swiped her sweaty hands on her leggings and squeezed closed her eyes. She could do this. She had to do this. Just one…

Shëanon touched the putrid mind of one of the orcs that stood far from the doorway, and through his eyes could see another orc standing before him.

Hastily she conjured the image she wished him to see: the orc before him with scimitar upraised, face animated by the bloodthirsty, malicious sneer she had seen on so many of their faces. She tried to make him see it, but it was not easy. Each time she attempted to push the image into his mind, the effort of focusing so hard on the pushing made her lose sight of the image itself, just as focusing on the image made it harder to concentrate on her Sight and the link between her mind and the orc. Then there was another problem, which was that such prolonged contact with the orc was so uncomfortable it was almost unendurable, as though every part of her shied away from the touch of its mind, and every moment she spent in contact with it was taxing and increasingly revolting.

Shëanon grit her teeth. Her head was pounding. She could feel the connection between her mind and the orc's like a thin thread stretched between them. With an immense strain, she willed the illusion slowly along this thread, stretching it further and further from her own mind, trying to plant it in his. As with a muscle pushed past the bounds of its strength, she felt her mind wavering, the thread and the image flickering in and out. She tried to forget about everything else: where she was, what was at stake, what would happen if she failed. She centered her entire being on this one task, this one thought, and showing it to this one creature.

'See it,' she willed it. 'Come on. See it…'

Suddenly, from the other side of the stone wall, over the din of the crowd, she heard it: a shriek of fury.

Shëanon gave a start.

More screeches and shouts followed, louder and louder, and then screams and crashes and an uproarious upheaval of pandemonium.

In disbelief, she quickly touched another mind, and saw the enormous fight that had broken out, and the utter mayhem in the hall. Her mind sought urgently for the minds of the human guards, and found them hastening to break up the fray.

For a single instant, she was frozen on the stairs. In the next, she was taking the remaining steps two at a time.

She barreled through the door at the bottom of the stairwell.

The violent scene that met her in the hall was one of sheer chaos as the orcs shed each other's blood and the Men commanded them to order.

But she didn't even turn to look. She ran as she had never before run: past the brawling throng of orcs, past the abandoned guard post, over the threshold of the towering door and across a long drawbridge, sprinting as fast as her legs could carry her. With the tumult of the orcs' fight fading in her ears—with the acrid air and ash in her face—her boot struck arid, black soil. Her Lórien cloak streamed behind her, her heart beat a desperate plea, and as the pin pricks that were the orcs' minds fell out of the reach of her Sight, Shëanon escaped the Black Tower and fled into the perpetual night.

XXX

Darkness.

All the land was darkness.

A dense cover of cloud and smoke blocked the sky and obscured sun, moon, and stars. The dry, scalding air was befouled by a rain of soot and cinders. Relentless winds roared in rampaging, raging gusts that lambasted the wretched earth, which itself was black and barren: the soil like dust, the ground an expansive waste. Immense, jagged black rocks cracked the desolate plains. They rose in some places like biting teeth that formed crags and trenches and cruel walls like a labyrinth, and stretched in others as an immense crust of boulders like a scab over flesh. Flesh indeed it may have been, for the land seemed alive with fury or with suffering; from fissures and clefts in the bedrock issued noxious fumes and rising plumes of vapor like a black breath. Hissing and spitting, rumbling and moaning in agonized lament or wrathful warning, Mordor seethed.

Shëanon had no idea how long she had been walking. Her face was raw from the sting of the burning air, her lips chapped, her ribs throbbing with every step. Without dawn or dusk to mark the days nor turn of heaven to guide her, she had no way to measure the passage of time nor navigate the plateau of Gorgoroth. She guessed that it must have been days since she had fled Barad-dûr, but she could not say how many.

What she did know, however, was that her escape had quickly been discovered. Not long after she had passed out of the prison and slipped into the hazy shadows, a crack of thunder like an earthquake had rent the air, and the ground itself had trembled, and the Nazgûl had taken to the skies. The shrieks of the fell beasts had screeched toward her on the wind, and as she had run, she was ever listening for them. More than once had she had to duck for cover, sweating and shaking, as the sound of the massive leathery wings beat in the distance, and she would huddle in the dark spaces between the broken banks of the black rock as steed and rider flew overhead. Her mounting fear grew each time they almost found her. The memory of her helpless struggle in the claws of one of those monstrous creatures and of finding herself held so high above the ground was paralyzing, but as it had on the plains of Rohan and on the tower stairs, her Lórien cloak seemed to obscure her from the sight of Sauron's most terrible servants.

What she felt certain it would not hide her from, however, was the great Eye. At the top of the tower, at an impossible height of some countless fathoms, she could see it. Indeed it seemed to be the only source of light in all of Mordor, though unlike the sun its light was loathsome and tainted—devouring rather than illuminating, and she would have preferred the darkness. Suspended between the immense, sharp spikes that stretched from the topmost crest of Barad-dûr like the gauntleted fingers of a vicious, grasping hand, the Eye of Sauron peered out across the charred plains and rocky lattice. It was a flame like a pyre, with a slit of a pupil at its center that seemed utterly void, and its very gaze seemed to scorch the ground where it fell. Shëanon avoided it at all costs.

On through the endless night she fled for as long as she could endure, stopping to walk only when her legs were leaden and she was struggling to breathe, and stopping to rest only when she was on the verge of collapse. When she had fled over the drawbridge, she had been running at a dead sprint, and she had maintained that pace for longer than she would have thought possible. Thoughts of the torture that would await her if she was recaptured, images of her father and Gandalf and Galadriel made thralls of the Black Tower, and terror in her heart from the memory of Sauron drove her to feats of endurance and speed of which she would not have thought herself capable. Not even when she and her companions had pursued Merry and Pippin to Fangorn Forest had she run as she did upon the plains of Gorgoroth. She was fleeing for her life, and for the fate of Middle-Earth.

But Shëanon's strength was failing. For a moment she paused and braced her hands on her knees, panting and exhausted. She squinted through the smoke and shade, gulping air that seemed to poison her, and grimaced. Though in great need she could go some days without sleep, she was well past that now, and she was so tired she wondered if she would sleep right there, standing up. Her eyelids were impossibly heavy, and her thoughts were all slow and muddled, and with every step she felt as though she were wading through a deep river, her limbs were so sluggish and weary.

At this thought, she closed her eyes. There was one necessity that even a full-blooded elf could not forgo for long: Shëanon was in desperate need of water. What little she had had in her water skin was long gone, and there was no stream anywhere to find more. Her mouth was so dry that she could not swallow, her throat so raw that it ached, and not a moment passed that she wasn't thinking of water to drink. If she could just soothe her parched throat—even just a few sips would have felt like a miracle.

But there was none to be found.

Groaning, she straightened up. It would be all right, she assured herself. Dying of thirst was perhaps the best-case scenario. If she perished somewhere in this treacherous wasteland, then Sauron could not use her blood to hurt anyone.

She told herself this over and over, as she fantasized about the loud, clear, clean Bruinen, but it did little to comfort her. She had a knife. If it were really just a matter of keeping her blood out of reach of Sauron, she could end her life as she had threatened to do in his throne room.

So then why this torturous flight? Why this desperate effort?

Because I don't want to die, she thought despairingly. She didn't. Oh, she didn't. She knew her chances were slim. She knew that she was probably going to fall here upon the hard rock, never to rise again. It seemed an utter certainty, and even if she survived long enough to cross the plateau of Gorgoroth, she would surely be killed once she drew near to the mountains and the orc-holds at their feet. She knew that where she was going, there was little hope of escape, even with her Sight.

Shëanon bit her cracked lip to keep it from trembling. She couldn't cry—she could not afford the water she would lose in her tears.

She shook her head.

"There is always hope," she whispered tremulously to herself, brushing dust and sweat from her face. That was what Aragorn had told her before the battle of Helm's Deep, and she clung to it like a prayer, alone in the deep dark.

When she had first escaped, she had met a long road, and she had known that she had to get as far away from it as possible. She had little doubt that the road was now manned by orcs sent out to recapture her, so she had fled deeper into the very heart of the desert. Now, whirling about in the smog and haze, she tried to find her bearings. The Ered Lithui were behind her, but she seemed to have gone too far north.

Shëanon drew a deep breath. That way lay the valley of Udûn, and the Black Gate.

But she was not going to the Black Gate.

Gritting her teeth and drawing her cloak closer about herself, praying she was going the right way, and that her memory of the geography of Mordor was serving her, she veered toward the southwest.

She sought the Tower of Cirith Ungol.

A tremor of unease coursed through her, for she was still not certain what was right. From the moment she had passed out of Barad-dûr, she had agonized over this. The Enemy knew she had escaped, and was looking for her. She suspected that Sauron would guess exactly where she was going—guess that her course would be for Cirith Ungol rather than the Morannon—so shouldn't she go northwest instead, where he might be less likely to seek for her?

But she couldn't.

Because Shëanon couldn't forsake Sam.

Even as more ash and dust blew into her face, she shook with worry. 'Dear to you is this creature, I deem.' That was what Sauron had said. But did it even matter if he knew she would try to rescue the hobbit? She couldn't leave him there, to be tortured and tormented and horribly killed. Besides, she tried to reason, there were only two paths open to her. The Ered Lithui and the Ephel Dúath—the Ash Mountains and the Mountains of Shadow—that bordered Mordor were impassable. If she would hope to flee, she had to take either the pass of Cirith Ungol, or dare the Black Gate. Even if Sauron was more likely to look for her at Cirith Ungol, her odds of escaping unnoticed through the Black Gate might still have been worse.

And this way, she might save Sam. Sauron had said that he was still alive. Shëanon hoped desperately that it was so, that he had not been lying to manipulate her, and that he had not yet questioned the hobbit nor allowed the orcs to kill him.

She grit her teeth, and grasped her head in her hands, shaking. If she could just know…

Many times after she had made her escape, she had tried to reach out with her Sight. The first thing she had done, when she had run so far away from Barad-dûr that she was faint with exhaustion, was try to find her father. Slumped in the dust, hiding in the shadows from the Eye, she had sought desperately with her mind for Elrond. She needed to warn him about the Three, needed to tell him of the danger in case she was recaptured… but it hadn't worked. She hadn't been able to find him. Galadriel she had tried, too, and Gandalf with a desperation, but without avail. She didn't know if it was because they were too far away, or because she was so very tired. She suspected it was both. Casting the illusion to distract the orcs had been an exhaustive effort, as had been using her Sight to escape the tower, and withstanding Sauron's interrogation before that. By the time she had tried to reach out again, she had been bone-weary in mind and in body.

Still she had tried to seek Sam's mind, to find out if he lived, and she had sought Frodo, too, but she had found nothing. Out in the middle of the empty plain where the only living thing was her, seeking their minds was like groping in the dark for a fallen pin.

Shëanon winced.

In the distance, stretching so high it touched the stormy cloud, stood Mount Doom. She had given it a wide berth as she'd fled Barad-dûr. The most direct path to Cirith Ungol would have taken her right past it, but she had gone around miles out of the way, disoriented and afraid, hoping that she would not as easily be found if she strayed off the course Sauron would expect her to take. Instead she would break for the Ephel Dúath and follow the mountains south toward Cirith Ungol.

They still seemed so far away.

Summoning her every last ounce of will, Shëanon lifted her foot and began to walk again.

She was so, so tired. She was so, so thirsty. She was in so much pain. On and on she walked, wandering through the maze-like rocks, and when she could, she ran. She had to keep going. She couldn't stop. Over steep slopes and slabs of sinister obsidian she slipped and staggered in her haste, sharp shards of shale shifting beneath her and scraping her palms when she fell. Each time she stumbled she rose again to journey on, but each time she fell it was harder to find the strength to stand, and her heart grew ever heavier.

Countless hours came and went. Maybe it was days. But suddenly, as she trudged miserably over the uneven earth, she stilled. On the scourging wind, faint and far-off, she could swear she heard some distant clamor…

Anxious, she turned and climbed up one of the steep cliffs all around, creeping slowly toward the top. Her arms shook in her exhaustion. She pressed down on her stomach to avoid being seen, and peered cautiously over the ridge.

Her stomach dropped.

Ahead of her, close enough that she could see it but far enough to pose no threat yet, stretched what seemed to be miles and miles of an orc-camp, squatting down in the canyons and crevices between the rising black boulders. She could just see the glittering lights that were their many fires, and the smoke that curled into the air over them, and the tops of huts amid the rocks. It seemed to go on and on in both directions—north and south—and reached straight back all the way to the feet of the mountains.

Shëanon shuddered and decided it was time to bear south, to continue through the barren desert rather than draw any nearer to the encampment, but before she had even finished the thought, a new one struck her:

If there were orcs in the camp, there must have been water.

Shëanon lay down her head upon the jagged granite beneath her and moaned in turmoil and conflict.

Did she dare risk it? There would be so many orcs—they were probably swarming down in the trenches like ants in a hill. Even with her Sight, how could she avoid being seen?

But she would die of thirst if she did not find water soon.

She hesitated.

How hard could it be to find water? If she had managed to escape Barad-dûr itself, couldn't she surely nip into this mere camp, find something to drink, and head right back out?

She lay there for a long moment thinking before she realized that her eyes had closed, and she was falling asleep right there upon the stone. Aghast, she leapt to her feet and slid back down into the gorge, shaking her head to rouse herself. That settled it. She was practically delirious, now—she needed water, or she would perish. She would have to brave the camp.

Cautious now that she knew enemies were so close by, Shëanon hastened through the maze of rocks toward the encampment, stopping every now and then to climb to another peak to make sure she was still going the right way. Increasingly disoriented, she was finding it harder and harder to navigate the terrain, and her feet were so heavy, and her head was pounding, and her mouth and throat were as dry as the world around her.

Finally, she drew nigh the very edge of the encampment, and scaled another rise to survey the dike ahead.

The scene was one of filth and villainy. Down in the gaps between the boulders nested hundreds and hundreds of shacks and tents, but it wasn't a mere burrow where the orcs slept and dwelt. Everywhere she looked, Shëanon saw caravans of supplies. Immense catapults and piles of rock to set in them. Wagons full of weapons. Forges as far as the eye could see, and great piles of metal for working and the armor and blades and helms that were worked. There were sacks of sand and of grain. There were mountains of coal and buckets of oil. There were also many stores of great iron cauldrons that she recognized instantly, and her lip curled with fury—it was the exploding powder that Saruman had used to blow the hole in the Deeping Wall. Even if the cauldrons hadn't looked the same, she would have known it at once, for she could smell it in her every breath, exactly as it had smelled in the wet air at Helm's Deep when Haldir had hauled her to her feet, and her ears had still been ringing. It seemed Sauron had stolen some of his servant's tricks.

And it was surely to be used at Minas Tirith, she realized, and wherever else the Enemy had use for it, for there were orcs everywhere, and they were clearly sending forth all this equipment to the front lines—to the Black Gate, she guessed. As she watched, the barrels and cauldrons of powder were loaded onto carts or pressed into the arms of miserable-looking orcs who were shuffling in long lines to carry them off on foot. She could see orcs being clad in armor and shoved into amassing battalions. Some were working to stoke the fires. Some were sharpening blades. Some bore great whips and were striking the ones they deemed did not work hard enough.

Shëanon observed all this from her perch and grimaced. She did not want to venture down into the camp, but she had no choice. Trembling with exhaustion and nerves, she clambered back down to level ground and took down her bow. She would do exactly as she had done at Barad-dûr. She would try to stay hidden, and use her Sight to guide her, and if an orc saw her, she would shoot it. She just needed water, that was all. There were provisions for their armies everywhere—surely some of these barrels must have held water.

She held her breath, and crept into the camp.

It was slow work—even slower than navigating the Black Tower, for the camp was much more densely occupied. There were some places amid the crags and crevices between the boulders, and behind some of the huts and mounds of supplies, that were quiet and empty, but other parts of the camp were roiling with yrch, and were practically impossible to pass through. Shëanon pressed deeper and deeper into the encampment, searching desperately. She crept into some of the tents. Where was the water? Foul as they were, the orcs were living creatures. They needed water to survive. There must have been water—there had to be.

But she couldn't find it.

Her desperation and exhaustion were making it hard to focus. She tried to touch the minds of some of the orcs, to see if she could find an answer that way, but it was so hard to use her Sight, now. She was so weary, and her head hurt so badly.

Just when she began to truly despair—when she feared she would collapse with thirst sooner than find what she sought—she saw it. Mounting another rise, she had looked down into the trench on the other side, and there it was.

Down in the grimy soil was a furrow like a gutter, and set in it was a metal trough over which water was flowing. She couldn't see its source, but it went twisting through the camp. Orcs were bending to drink from it like barn animals, some cupping the water with their hands but indeed others on all fours with their faces down in the water.

Shëanon didn't care. She would drink even this sullied orc water. But how to get it?

With her heart in her throat, she waited for the orcs to clear off. Further up ahead was another great pile of the explosive powder that dozens of orcs were being made to siphon from barrels into more of the cauldrons, and in their toil some were hurrying to gulp mouthfuls of water. She bit her lip. She would have to make a break for it when they weren't looking—surely there would come a chance. She could fill her water skin and flee. She could hear the flowing water. She could practically taste it already. If she could just—

There was suddenly a loud, discordant horn, and a great din, and turning toward the south she saw thousands of orc soldiers mobilizing to go to war. They bore immense banners emblazoned with crude depictions of the flaming Eye, and carried pointed pikes and spears. It was only then, as she watched them marching, that she realized just how deep into the camp she had gone. Now that these orcs would pass behind her, she would be trapped, and there would be no way out.

Her heartbeat in her ears was like a hurricane. She had to flee immediately. She had wandered into a net, and now would be ensnared. Silently she slid down back into one of the trenches, in a dark pass that was momentarily empty, though she knew it would not be for long, and she couldn't linger there. There was a wide road behind her that was fenced on both sides by the walling rocks, and she would have nowhere to hide if she were found here.

Nervously she began to hedge her way around the immense boulder upon which she had been waiting, still desperate to make a bid for the water before she left, but she could still hear many orcs around the other side. She wanted to cry. She was stuck—

Then behind her she heard it—a crunch upon the gravel.

With a gasp of alarm and fright, Shëanon drew an arrow and spun, bringing it to string and lifting her bow at once, thinking surely she had been discovered.

She expected to hear the screech of an orc. To see angry, yellow eyes. To be seized.

But it wasn't an orc.

She lowered her bow.

There, not ten paces from her, wide-eyed and visibly shocked, stood Frodo and Sam.

For one stunned instant none of them moved, and they stared at each other, the two hobbits appearing as astonished by her appearance as she was by theirs. They stood beside one of the many fires burning in the night, filthy from head to toe, thinner than when she had last seen them, and covered in bruises and cuts. Her mind seemed to stumble. Sam wasn't captured. He wasn't a prisoner of Cirith Ungol! Shëanon opened her mouth to speak, though she did not know what she would say. She couldn't believe it. She wanted to weep with relief to see them, alive and unharmed as she had prayed for so long. But so too was she filled with dread, for they were surrounded, and they were, she knew, in terrible peril—

"Shëanon?" Sam asked in a hoarse, dumbfounded voice.

It was as she took a step forward to go to them that she saw, gleaming on its chain about Frodo's neck, the Ring.

Suddenly Shëanon found herself covered in a cold sweat. She recalled again, with blinding clarity, the vision she had had when she had first touched the Ring with her mind; Sauron's voice inside her head, the memory all the stronger for having heard his voice in person—all the more terrifying for having endured his torture—

'Where is it? Where is it?'

She heard Legolas's voice, so many months ago, at the council. 'Have you heard nothing Lord Elrond has said? The Ring must be destroyed!'

She heard Frodo, as though he were speaking there before her. 'I will take the Ring to Mordor.'

She heard her own words, begging her father: 'I am meant to go, I know it.'

Shëanon cut her eyes to the silhouette, closer than she'd ever have thought to see it and yet still so far, of Mount Doom. It loomed impossibly tall in the distance, the face of it black before the tempestuous sky.

She looked back into Frodo's face. His eyes appeared haunted, his expression grim, as though he could tell exactly what she was thinking and was waiting to see what she would do.

A heartbeat of time passed, the three of them unmoving, while she tried to think of what to do, what she should do, how she could help them—

"This way, boys! Get a move on! This war won't fight itself!"

Shëanon whirled around. She could hear, over the thundering of her heart, the clamor of heavy, iron-shod feet. She reached out with her Sight. There were about a hundred orcs about to come around the corner and find them there.

She made up her mind at once.

"Go!" she hissed, turning back to the hobbits. She could tell by the looks on their faces that they, too, had heard the approaching soldiers, but they were trapped. There was nowhere to go except around the corner toward the orcs, or down the long, entrenched path where they would still be visible once the orcs turned the bend.

She nocked her arrow again, panting, but Frodo and Sam hadn't moved.

"GO!" she cried again, her entire body trembling. From around the boulder she could see a light growing and growing—the torches of the coming battalion. They were only moments from reaching them. "I cannot defend you—there are too many. You have to get out of here!"

Sam's face crumpled.

"Milady—" he said, shaking his head, but Shëanon spoke over him.

"Destroy the Ring," she pleaded, glancing over her shoulder and half expecting to see the leering faces of the Orcs already. "I will—distract them."

Sam stared back at her, and she thought he would cry. The Sam she had last seen at Amon Hen would have. Instead he turned his sandy head to look at his friend, for Frodo remained motionless.

As she beheld him she thought he must have aged a hundred years since the fateful day the fellowship had broken, his face gaunt, and his spirit no longer young. A flicker of understanding seemed to come into his eyes, and as she watched, he caught the One Ring in his fist, gazed for one more instant back at her, and nodded.

"Come on, Sam," he said.

Sam wavered for only one moment more, as though aggrieved, and then they both turned and fled through the trench.

Shëanon couldn't afford to watch them go. She turned back to face the coming threat, panicking, her mind racing, her heart speeding. If she tried to fight, she knew, she would not last long. Even if she hadn't been weak, hurt, and exhausted, she did not have her sword, she had precious few arrows, and she knew that she was sorely outnumbered and would find herself besieged and overrun as she had been upon Amon Hen.

She thought briefly of casting another illusion, but didn't see how it could work. It had taken her a long time to succeed the last time, and there were so many orcs about to come around the bend. She couldn't deceive them all, and even if she started another fight, the orcs would still continue on the way they were going, eventually, down the long path where Frodo and Sam were.

The seconds flashed by. She cast around desperately for anything to do, any other choice. What she really needed was a way to stop not only these coming orcs, but all the orcs in the camp—if she could just—draw them all away—she needed to cause a disturbance that would allow Frodo and Sam to escape.

Her immediate thought was that she needed to surrender. Surely finding Sauron's missing prisoner would cause a commotion that would bring orcs from all over running.

She quailed.

If that was truly the best way… the right thing… It wouldn't matter if she were recaptured so long as Frodo and Sam prevailed…

Standing beside the fire, she drew in a trembling breath that was bitter with the smell of Saruman's powder—

Shëanon went rigid.

'Why else would I have seen it, if not to act upon it?' she had once asked Galadriel. What had been her answer?

'Perhaps they sought to prepare you for what was to come.'

She wasn't even breathing.

'So many people died at Helm's Deep when I was supposed to make sure the wall didn't fall…' her own voice echoed in her ears. 'I think it must be important, otherwise I would not keep seeing it.'

'Do you remember the message I gave you from Lady Galadriel? Do not forget it.'

Shëanon knew.

Whirring around she dove, as quickly as she could, towards the fire. As she felt the orcs draw ever nearer, she tore a strip of fabric from the bottom of her tunic and drove the head of her arrow through it, bundling the ends up and affixing it to the arrowhead with violently trembling fingers. Frantically she grabbed for the oil lamp swinging near to the fire. It slipped and fell from her hand, clattering into the dirt, as she heard the marching orcs coming closer and closer. Swearing, Shëanon knelt and dunked the arrow into the lamp, leapt to her feet, and plunged the arrowhead into the heart of the fire.

At once the cloth ignited, and she turned as fast as she could, scrambling, clutching the flaming arrow in her hand. She scurried up the side of the steep rock face behind which she had been hiding. It was an awkward climb, one handed, up onto the rocks, but at last she reached the jagged peak high above and crouched on the rocky crest.

From the top she could see them, mere feet from her, rounding the bend where Shëanon had only just stood with Frodo and Sam—hundreds of Sauron's orcs, their crude spears and scimitars upraised, but as she hurried to nock her arrow and find her bearings, it was away from them that she turned.

The scalding wind whipped soot into her face and blew back her hair as she stood. From her vantage point she could see not only the legion of orcs passing behind her but also the miles of camp that stretched at her feet.

She drew back her bowstring—the arrowhead still aflame—and sighted her target. As she stood on the precipice, her bow bent, the fire at her arrow's end flickering in the wind, she felt for an instant that she might have been back in Imladris, with her brothers and Aragorn, learning to shoot. Shëanon closed her eyes.

'In your need remember what destruction fire wreaks.'

With the message from Galadriel in her ears, Shëanon drew in a breath, let loose her arrow, and threw herself down flat against the rock. If she had hit her mark, then—

She shielded her face and clutched the rock beneath her as the ground itself shook with the force of the explosion, her body almost blown back by its strength. She could hear crash after crash as debris hit the ground.

Instantly, there came a mighty roar of surprise and dismay as the orcs behind scrambled back the way they had come, staggering and ducking through the rising dust and falling detritus to discover what had happened, and when Shëanon lifted her head and peered over the crest, she saw a gaping, smoldering crater where once there had been tents and shacks and rocks, and the piled up canisters of Saruman's explosive powder.

For an instant she lay frozen in shock, gazing down at the ruined section of the camp and the pandemonium she had unleashed. Then Shëanon pushed herself up to her feet, and ran.

With her heart pounding, she darted through the camp, sprinting amid the rocky trenches and behind the tents, and keeping to the shadows. The chaos that had befallen was such that she hardly had to hide, for there were orcs running madly about everywhere, and more than once she sprinted straight through a throng of them, unnoticed, as they scrambled and screeched in the aftermath of the blast. Sweating and shaking with determination and disbelief, she barreled her way through the camp, away from Mount Doom, in the opposite direction that she had sent Frodo and Sam, searching, searching, casting her gaze frantically about until—

Until she found another immense stockpile of the cauldrons.

Again she drew and ignited an arrow. Again she climbed to one of the black peaks. Again, the encampment shook with the force of the explosion as all the orcs standing too close were blown up. Again the cries of anger, the surge of running feet, but it seemed that some of the more intelligent orc commanders had realized that two explosions was no coincidence.

"The she-elf!" she heard a livid voice cry. "Look for the she-elf! It's the she-elf! Find her! Find her!"

And then came the high-pitched, ear-splitting screeches, otherworldly and hair-raising, and the air was disturbed by the strokes of enormous, beating wings.

'Good,' Shëanon thought grimly, even as she sighted another caravan of wagons piled high with the wicked powder. 'Let them come—let all nine of them come. If they're coming this way looking for me, that's one less obstacle in Frodo's path…'

But she crouched for a long time, trembling and panting with fright, down against the rocks in hiding as one of the Nazgûl passed above her. Finally, she mustered enough courage to take aim over the ridge—she had a clear path—and loosed another arrow.

On and on it went. Shëanon tried to use her Sight to navigate the camp, but there was such confusion and disorder after each explosion that trying to keep track of the minds of the orcs was a useless endeavor that left her head spinning in the cacophony of their thoughts. Sometimes she had to dart into the tents and shacks to hide. Sometimes she skulked and hesitated for a long time in the deep places between the sharp boulders. Sometimes she made desperate sprints from one cover to a next, waiting at every moment to be discovered, and sometimes she had to dive hastily out of sight, as the pulse of the fell beasts' wings blew over her. And then she would find more of the powder, and raze more of Sauron's army to the ground.

It seemed to last forever.

Just one more, she thought, after each explosion. Just one more time. Keep going for one more.

Shëanon climbed up another crest and saw a blockade of orcs up ahead.

"Move them!" cried one of their leaders, as the orcs were frantically attempting to separate and haul away the cauldrons. "Hurry up, you worthless scum! Move!"

She drew a steadying breath, and nocked another flaming arrow, and fired.

She was already running again before the earth had stopped shaking, before the bodies and ruin arcing through the air had fallen. Deeper into the encampment. Dodging and fleeing. Searching out another target.

Finally, after she much toil and terror, she found more of the cauldrons. Shëanon released a breath and tore another strip of cloth from her tunic, and reached for an arrow.

Her hand closed upon it—the last one in her quiver.

Her heart staggered. After she fired this arrow, her only weapons would be her dagger and the Lady's knife. She swallowed, and set to preparing the arrow and finding a fire with which to light it. She could scarcely see—each explosion had raised a thick cloud of dust that lingered like a heavy mist, but the bright licking flames of the orcs' fires shone through and she swiftly plunged her arrow into another oil lamp and then into the flames beside it.

She sprinted back through the camp, until she reached another ridge where she could loose the arrow and duck for cover. Clamping the shaft in her teeth, the flame at its end flickered in her peripheral vision as she hauled herself up the steep, rocky slope and crouched at its peak. As she brought the arrow to her bowstring, however, she felt a pang of doubt. She was too close to the powder kegs she meant to hit—she needed to fall back and find a different vantage point, or else she would be caught in the explosion.

Sweating with nerves and racked by adrenaline, she had only just risen and began to turn, when she heard it once more.

The beating wings. The terrible screech.

Shëanon's entire body seized up in horror, and with dread in her heart, she whirled back around and saw it.

As on the Pelennor Fields, as in that moment of sheer terror, a fell beast was gliding straight toward her. Its gaping maw was open wide, its eyes glaring and fixed upon her, and the rider astride its back thrust its accursed blade outstretched in an armored hand as though commanding a charge of victory.

There was one single instant that she thought to dive back into the trench and flee for cover, but as the Nazgûl bore down upon her, and as she clutched her very last arrow, a sense of certainty and resolve stole over her, and her mind was made up, and instead of fleeing, she planted her feet. The Ringwraith grew larger and larger, fell beast looming closer and closer, bearing ever lower, and she lifted her bow once more and pulled back the string.

Her chest heaved. Her heart thundered. Her hands were shaking upon her bow and upon nock and string, and she felt a bead of sweat run down her temple. The assaulting wind lashed her face and stung her eyes with dirt and ash, but she didn't move.

Time seemed to still, and the length of a single breath suddenly seemed to span an age. But as the wraith soared nearer and held her in its sight, the fell beast gaining like a decree of doom drawn from her darkest dreams, and Death dawned over the destroyed horizon, it was not her life that flashed before her eyes.

Who are you? Who are you?

A wretched, pestilent curse you were born.

I am no one.

Weakest of all your kin do I name you, half-elf.

I think you have some fight in you, Daughter of Elrond.

Worthless—unnatural—beast!

You had best put our teachings to good use.

The she-elf! The she-elf!

I would hear it from the witch's own mouth.

Do you think you know what it means to sacrifice your life?

You are brave and good, iell nín, and stronger than you think.

Filthy half-breed!

You have been a brave and loyal member of this company.

I know your heart.

You, Shëanon Peredhel, are nothing.

I am not no one.

When the dragon-like wings of the beast were so close she was almost blown over, when its cruel claws flexed open as though to seize her once again, and when the empty abyss beneath the Nazgûl's hood was in sight, she released her breath and loosed her arrow at last.

Her bowstring sang beside her ear. Her arrow, bright with fire in the deep shadow, sailed like a comet in the heavens, straight and true.

It passed beneath the Nazgûl. It passed beneath the fell beast. It flew toward the mountain of cauldron-kegs directly below them, and Shëanon closed her eyes.

She reached out with all her strength, with all her will, and with all her heart in one final, tremendous, desperate effort, thinking, one last time, with all the might of her soul and mind, of Legolas.

Her arrow struck its mark, and Shëanon careened into darkness.

A/N:

Hello, my amazing, incredible, wonderful readers! I can't even believe the response to the last chapter. Thank you so so much for all your comments. I am just blown away by all the support and love.

When I was little, my nightly bedtime stories came from The Silmarillion. I was immersed in Middle-Earth before I could even read. Once I was able to read the books and see the movies, I fell even more in love with Tolkien's creation, and while I have an immense love for the entire Legendarium, The Lord of the Rings has always been my favorite. There was just one thing I wished I could change: there were no girls. It's true that Tolkien wrote some impressive female characters. Galadriel and Éowyn for example are amazing, but they're not in the fellowship. They're not on the quest. I wanted someone I could see myself in traveling with the company, forming those incredible bonds with the characters I loved so much, and taking part in the story that meant so much to me. So I created Shëanon.

Early in the publication of this story, a reviewer told me that Shëanon had no business joining the company or embarking on the quest, because, by their standards, she wasn't good enough to go. Not strong enough, not important enough, not an asset. I wanted to laugh, because, ironically, that's exactly what Shëanon thought, too. But it was important to me to create a character who grows, a character on a journey, and not just a journey through Middle-Earth but a journey to find herself. When we first meet her, Shea is insecure, anxious, and lacks confidence. I wrote her this way because it was something I felt many of us can relate to. How often do we feel that we are lacking? How many of us suffer from anxiety, or worry over our worth? But I knew, even when that reviewer said she shouldn't be there, what Shëanon was going to ultimately do. I am so, SO happy to share this moment with you at last. It has taken us a long time to get here, and I'm so very thankful for everyone who has joined me and Shëanon on this journey. It's true that she isn't the strongest member of the company. It's true that she's not the bravest, or the wisest, or the most skilled fighter. But Shëanon gets back up when she falls. She is loyal. She is kind. She has a tremendous amount of heart. Isn't that the most that any of us can aspire to be? I said that Shëanon was on a journey to find herself, and I think that at last, she has. But it's not because she finally knows who her father is. It's because she has finally found her self-worth. Even though this chapter is undoubtably the darkest moment of her journey, I think it is also her greatest triumph. I hope I have done her justice.

Her story isn't over just yet. There are still some important questions to answer and some important moments in store. I'm so excited to share them with you all. Thank you so much again to everyone who is reading along. I hope you are finding even a tiny bit of the joy in reading that I feel in writing. :')

xoxo Erin