Chapter 4
Kili, King of Ered Luin, was on foot as he led two ponies and his brother's son down the steep trail near horsetail falls when a trio of ravens suddenly burst from the trees repeating a loud message.
Lads! Lads! Lads!
Kili smiled. This was how they'd began referencing his two dwarrow sons...his incredible luck at finding his one lady love and then having two lads and one lass of his own amazed to him even to this day.
Skirf has brought the lads out to the spring to meet us, he guessed. The ravens wouldn't be this excited unless they were close.
In a tree… One of the ravens called in an echoing voice. In a treeeee…
The trail leveled off and Gunz stepped up to take the lead of the second pony. "Are they suggesting an ambush?" he asked of the ravens, his sharp eyes scanning the pines around them.
"Of a sort," Kili smiled and lowered his voice to a whisper. ""But you'll have to play along." He winked at his nephew, blond and blue eyed and now so much like a younger version of his own brother that Kili's heart sometimes lurched. Fili… Far away in Erebor, of course. And Fili was now heavier, both in stature and in mind.
Gunz looked blankly at him for a moment, then smiled quickly and looked away as if completely unaware of any impending action. "Got it," he said to Kili, relaxing.
Being a prince himself, Gunz understood the games that young lads liked to play with their royal fathers. And that quirky grin was all Gunz. Fili had always been far more stoic.
Kili nodded at his nephew, then hooked a safety loop over the hilt of his belt knife and saw Gunz do the same. He knew his lads would try for the knives and while Kili allowed them practice weapons, letting them get hold of his real fighting blades was another thing.
And then he looked up sharply as Gunz let out a loud "ooof" and ambush arrived in the form of a clumsy dark-haired lad who quite possibly hadn't really meant to fall on his cousin's head, since his fierce battle cry only came out after he realized his cousin had broken his fall.
Gunz released the mildly surprised pony's lead line, then pretended as though the "fall" was a battle tactic and fell sideways.
"Uncle!" He shouted, just as a pinecone smacked Kili's left bicep. "Wildings! Help!"
Kili's hands went for his bow (but not an arrow) and he stopped as if unsure where to aim. "Where? Left or right?"
Gunz was busy rolling, preventing the small lad in his arms from landing a punch. "Overhead!" he called out.
In a flash, Kili shouldered his bow and jumped for a low tree branch, managing to grab the foot of the second lad. He was back on the ground with his older son held upside down by the boot before the lads could respond.
Gunz, guessing the next move, let the smaller lad go.
Sure enough, brother went to brother's defense and Kili found his right hip under attack by Sorin's small (but mighty) fists as he held Kirin out at arm's length.
Sorin managed to hook one hand over Kili's elbow and add his weight to the arm holding Kirin, and Kili laughed, letting them all collapse into a heap.
Gunz calmly dusted himself off and gathered the ponies' lead lines, making sure the sturdy pack animals weren't completely shocked by the sight of dwarves rolling in the dust.
"Da!" Both lads happy voices filled the air, trying hold their father down while making sure they each got a fatherly arm for welcome home hugs.
Kili had them both in a bear hug, threatening to skin one and feed the other to his cubs when he saw Skirfir be the one to surprise Gunz-coming from behind him and slapping his shoulder.
"Welcome back to Khelethur, Prince Gunnar," Skirf said.
Gunz's eyes widened in recognition of his Uncle's ushmar and gave way to smiles and hugs.
Then Skirf intervened in his lord King's ambush and held out a hand to Kili. "Enough, lads," he said to the boys in his commander's voice. "A King has to be dusted off before he joins his troops. Princes, too."
The lads rolled free and scrambled to their feet (it took Sorin three tries) and stood straight, patting the dust off their jackets (though not really getting any of it removed.) Kili accepted Skirf's hand and stood as well, reaching out to ruffle his lads' dark, unruly hair and pull them closer again for real hugs.
"I've missed you," he said in a low voice. "And here's your cousin Gunnar back from his studies."
Without prompting, Kirin and Sorin, suddenly aware of their princely duty, ran to their cousin, stopping a few feet away from him and standing side by side.
"Kirin," Kirin announced himself.
"And Sorin," Sorin added.
And they bowed together. "At your service."
Gunz grinned, put his hand on his heart, and bowed formally in turn. "Gunnar of Erebor, at yours and your family's."
Fili, King of Erebor, was the only ravenspeaker up at dawn. He went to the more private Western Terrace, and given that ravens were waiting there, he realized that his preference had become predictable.
In any case, he welcomed the fresh morning air, sharp and cool and arid this time of year. Erebor awaited the first snow, but snow-laden weather had not yet blown in from the west.
He was surprised, however, to see a crowd of ravens on the terrace—far more than the usual few.
This many messages?
His practiced eye judged the small flock as calm, so he felt certain there was nothing war-like in their news. So he deployed a sorting trick and started his raven duty by tossing seeds and nuts generously about the stone ledge. Most birds would go straight to the treats and help themselves.
Any bird with urgent news would forego the food for the chance to present itself first and deliver its message without the whole flock in the way.
Sure enough, one raven landed on a handrail to his left and let out a loud, demanding quorrrrk. It stood especially tall, as if feeling very important.
Fili smiled. The treats first trick always worked.
"Good morning, friend. What brings you here?" Fili held up his forearm and the raven immediately hopped over.
Elf-king sends word.
Fili's brows came together. He and Thranduil had settled into peaceful relations...always a bit on the uneasy side, but Fili counted him as an ally. "Good bird," Fili said, holding the raven so they were eye-to-eye.
The raven stared and held itself still and very clearly vocalized, "Car-Ithil aith y' lema."
Fili blinked. His early morning brain struggled to translate what he recognized as elvish. Red-moon marks a journey. Fili tried to sort that. Clearly Thranduil had seen the eclipse.
"Thranduil is traveling?" Fili asked, unable to help keeping surprise from his voice. He hadn't seen that old elf outside of his woods since the year they'd ousted Smaug from the Mountain.
The raven remained still, then ruffled itself and went on. It continued to speak not as a natural raven, but as a raven compelled to recite a message in the sender's voice—a particular elvish spell Thranduil could weave.
"The moon shines full," the raven recited in elvish. "The moon shines full, the moon shines red...and portends death to many by next the moon is full again. A city forgotten two thousand years lies west...but what a King desires lies in shadow still. I send a messenger bearing an ancient scroll. This you must study to save your kin."
Fili was staring at the bird and was about to ask it to repeat the message when it shook itself and clacked three times as if clearing its head. Then it sharpened its beak on his gauntlet, looked around as if surprised to find itself in Erebor, and then launched itself toward the nuts.
Whatever spell Thranduil had cast on the bird had been broken once the words were delivered.
Hastily, Fili grabbed one of the slates kept at the ravenspeaker platform and made a cryptic note, in elvish, capturing the message while he could still recall it verbatim.
"Ravenmaster?" Fili called out while proofing his note. He always struggled with elvish.
"Aye, my lord?" The commander in charge of the raven area stepped forward.
"Send a message to the Gate. An envoy is arriving from our good king Thranduil," he said this last with just the barest of sarcasm. That "good King" had once tossed him in a dungeon after all. "Send me word when he arrives, and provided he has the correct tokens, ask for him to be given every courtesy and brought to my reception hall. I will meet him there."
The Ravenmaster bowed curtly and when Fili nodded his dismissal, turned to deliver the order.
"And one more thing," Fili added an afterthought. "Send for Iri and her tutor Zêl."
Fili set the slate aside and busied himself with the rest of the raven flock. The rest of the morning news was thankfully routine. A light flurry of snow fell on the peak in the early hours. A bar fight in Dale last night (no surprise there.) A new barge with good from Minas Tirith arrived from Laketown.
Fili felt a pang sadness. That was the sort of news that would have had An's attention.
Not for the first time, he missed her presence in his life.
He was standing on the ravenspeaker platform, considering the view down the western slope and reflecting on how many more years he would remain here when he heard one of the few voices that would turn his mind from those dark and heavy thoughts.
"Good morning, Da!" Iri took the steps up to the platform at speed and had her arms around him for a morning hug before he could fully turn around.
He held her tight a moment. She was nothing like her mother except in one aspect: she always smelled like fresh, clean stone.
He released her and smiled. This morning her yellow-gold hair was pulled back from her forehead in a complicated weave that ended in a top knot, with free-flowing curls falling down her back. She wore a topaz colored tunic embroidered with autumn ferns under her training leathers and trousers, along with her everyday boots.
"Good morning, Iri," he said, smiling at her. She did know how to brighten his day.
"I've brought Zêl along," she said, holding a hand out to her tutor, who had quite properly remained beside the ravenmaster a few feet away.
"Zêl!" Fili called out, making an effort to be cheerful. "Come on up, lass. I've a riddle for you."
Zêl made a quick hand-on-heart bow and, lifting her skirt, climbed the short stairway to the platform. When she arrived, Fili handed her the slate he'd written on.
"A raven brought this message from the Greenwood this morning." He left out the part about an elvish spell. Iri would recognize it, but by agreement, ravenspeakers kept this kind of knowledge to themselves.
"Thranduil is known to be prescient from time to time, though his Elvish is damned cryptic at best. Tell me, how do you interpret the first line?" Fili passed his slate to Iri and Zel.
Zel took the slate and studied Fíli's notes. As a scholar, he knew her Elvish was quite good and he watched her closely as Zel's eyes scanned his notes. Her expression, first only inquisitive, turned more and more into a deep frown. Eventually, one of her eyebrows slowly went up and he could see her opinion about elves in general and their abstruse prophecies clearly written across her face.
"And…?" Fíli asked.
''Cryptic… that's one way to put it…'' Zel muttered, eyes on the slate.
Then she looked up at Fíli. Her hair, he noted, didn't change daily. It was always in two thick braids intertwined with cord.
"My Lord," Zêl stated openly and her eyebrow relaxed slightly. "You know that as a scholar I slightly disapprove any kind of elvish ozrid when it comes to interpreting what we see in the nighttime sky ."
Fíli nodded. "I agree, my dear Zêl. But I always think twice when our neighbors send me something this foreboding."
"A lunar eclipse," Zêl went on. ''Is natural and has little impact on the events here on the ground. Yet as dwarves of Erebor we know the power of magic all too well." They looked at each other a moment. Fili nodded and Zêl went back to studying the slate. "And," she went on in a lower voice. "We all know that Thranduil can sense things creeping unseen in the wilds. Things we otherwise might not notice until it's too late.''
''So you think the elf is giving us a true warning?''
''Yes, I do, and I would suggest we take the warning seriously." She was looking at him with a level gaze. "The first line suggests calamity within a month. The next full moon is in twenty- seven days. But we might prevent this if we carefully study the scroll that the Elf-King is inclined to send us." She glared again. ''A scroll he has obviously possessed for quite a while…'' she grumbled quietly more to herself than to her King.
At the last words, Zêl's face showed a Durin-style glower and Fili saw his daughter put her hand over her mouth to suppress a giggle.
Fíli nodded and smiled wryly. "Well," he conceded. "Elves and dwarves...always difficult."
Iri let herself smile, then stood closer to Zêl to see the slate. "And what is this part?" she asked. " A city forgotten two thousand years lies west...but what a King desires lies in shadow still." She appeared to re-read it, her lips moving silently.
She looked up, first at Zêl, then her father. "What city lies west? There's nothing for leagues on leagues…"
Zêl went still. "Could he mean…" She went pale and whispered. "Khelethur?"
Iri frowned and looked again at the slate. "Ered Luin? Is that why it refers to our kin?" she demanded.
Fili's face was stone still. His only brother Kili, yes, resided in Khelethur. And somewhere else in Ered Luin was the other source of his persistent grief.
Gunnar...who had not returned to him since his mother's passing.
"My Lord," the Ravenmaster called out. "Word from the Gate: the envoy had already arrived."
Fili looked up to see his daughter and her tutor looking at him with serious faces.
"You might as well come along," he said to them. "It's time to see what Thranduil has sent."
Ten minutes later Fili had shrugged into a royal robe and the three of them entered his Reception Room to find an elf standing still as a silver birch on a windless night.
King Kili and Queen Nÿr stood together on Khelethur's ravenspeaker parapet well into the sunny autumn morning. Kili held her close and they both looked up at the sound of fallen leaves skittering across the rooftop. The Khelethur Valley, deep between monoliths of solid granite, ran east to west. The sun had risen at the higher end, crested Greyhelm Rock and now soared overhead. It would set over the silver stream at the lower, western end.
"It feels good to be home," Kili said to her, glad for this moment of stillness with her head against his shoulder.
"It is good to have you home," she murmured. "But," she said, wrapping her arms tighter around him. "I have the feeling you will be off again by tomorrow."
Kili smiled. "You know me too well. Can you forgive me?"
Nÿr laughed. "Only if you tell me you are heading home again once Gunz is safely delivered to the Dunedain."
Kili considered how to answer that. In truth, he was undecided.
Nÿr pulled back and he could tell without looking that she had narrowed one eye at him. "You have to expect him do this on his own, Kili."
He looked at her, a little bit taken aback that her thoughts were more for Gunz than for him. Then he chided himself for thinking her only concern was him. Of course she managed many things as Queen of Ered Luin, most especially the royal children and this included their nephew Gunz.
"Your Uncle sent you off on assignments at that age," she said. "He was teaching you to trust your own abilities."
"He did not send us on dangerous assignments. And he always sent us together," Kili replied. He and Fili were always given assignments as a pair, as he imagined they would do with his own lads. "Gunz is on his own, and this is no simple trading jaunt."
"We are in a new age, and Gunz will need to make his own friendships with his brother's allies."
"Yes," he conceded. She was right about that.
"And he will have ravens with him as you and Fili did not."
"Yes." Again, she was right.
She was quiet a moment. "What are you worried about?"
Kili took a moment to consider the feelings churning in his gut. Finally he answered.
"That Gunnar will stay in the wilderland and never return to Erebor."
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Ozrid = magic (spell); hocus-pocus. (Thanks to the Dwarrow Scholar's English-Khuzdul Dictionary!)
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A/N THANK you for waiting patiently for this chapter. I had a truly fabulous visit to London (flew over from the US west coast) and saw both Aidan Turner and Sir Ian McKellan in their West End plays...just fabulous, both of them. Saw Aidan outside the back door after the show signing autographs-so patient and kind to everyone. Bonus: saw Wee Thomas, his feline co-star, lol. Also took time to visit the ravens at the London Tower and made lots of notes on raven behavior.
Then I got home and it took me a week just to recover from jet lag and another to dig out from the pile of work that greeted me at my day job, lol.
Next trip is to the Middle Earth event at Solingen, Germany in May 2019. Looking forward to seeing MagiCon friends there! (But, not doing MagiCon. Just not the same as HobbitCon and RingCon.)
Finally, a shout-out to Jessie152 who is characterizing Zêl, the star-gazing tutor. :D High fives to Jessie! And a hand-on-heart shout out to TOWG for the fab edits. THANK you, mellyn!
Onward!
Summer
