PROLOGUE

"Minas Tirith is saved!"

She heard the words as if they came from very far away, even though the ragged man with drying blood on his face stood right next to her in the doorway. His face bore a sincere smile as he uttered them, despite his frightening appearance.

Lothíriel paid him no heed. They all knew the siege must have been lifted as soon as bleeding, wounded warriors started pouring into the Houses of Healing by the dozens. There was no time to stop and listen, no time to rejoice at the good news; even though the battle outside had been won, there was a whole other kind of battle unfolding before her very eyes. Screaming men were being brought in almost constantly, so much so that they had to position several of the refugees from the lower levels of the city at the heavy wooden doors to keep them from closing. Now, after the fighting had ceased, their number was bound to grow substantially.

All around her there was pure chaos – men shouting in pain, pleading for their lives to be saved; broken bones; amputated limbs piling up in the corner of the main hall; blood everywhere one could see. The number of healers was desperately scarce and so they were forced to make the tough choice of leaving those beyond saving to die, not even having the time to ease their suffering.

As Lothíriel was taking all of this in, she suddenly felt horribly sick – not from the sight of blood and all the gore around her, being used to many unsavory sights as a healer, but rather from the terrible feeling of helplessness as she saw people die right next to her, over and over for what seemed like eternity. She quickly ran to the open terrace doors and stumbled up the few steps leading outside. There were a handful of people standing around there, but she paid them no heed as she tore the white mask from her face, leaned forward and retched right then and there, losing the strength in her legs and sliding down to her knees onto the cold marble.

This caught the attention of two of the men standing close by and they ran to her side.

Rohirrim? Lothíriel was puzzled when she saw the long blond waves of hair underneath a layer of dried blood and dirt as they both bent down and helped get her back on her feet. She had only seen men of Rohan a few times before, when horse breeders and merchants came to Dol Amroth to sell fresh foals of the season or the seed of their most prized stallions. What are they doing here now?

"Are you alright?" the younger one of them asked, clutching her elbow as if he was worried she might fall again.

"Uh, yes, I think so. I'm sorry, I was just…"

Her voice trailed off as her eyes moved to the man's left and saw the city below the terrace for the first time. Fires were burning everywhere, and smoke was rising to the overcast sky. Crumpled buildings and stone were lying scattered in the narrow streets and little squares, covering dead bodies in the hundreds, if not more. Lothíriel had never seen anything like it. Her throat tightened and suddenly it seemed as if she was drowning, unable to breath in or out. She instinctively put her hands over her mouth at the sheer shock of what she had just witnessed, and that's when she realized she had taken off the healer's mask that concealed most of her face.

A cold chill went through her body at the realization, but as she quickly looked around the terrace she only saw a few blond heads, entirely unknown to her. At last the invisible fist clutching her throat let go and she could breathe out the air that was stuck in her lungs.

It was hard to tell whether the horror outside was worse than the one unfolding inside the walls of the Houses of Healing, which luckily remained intact. Lothíriel shuddered at the thought of being buried alive under piles of stone and marble, crushed like an unfortunate spider caught crawling on the floor.

She took a deep breath to calm down. After all, there was much work to be done, and it would not be pretty. The human mind could only take in so much shock and horror before it either shut down completely or resolved to concentrate on other things and shut out everything else. Lothíriel's mind had chosen the latter, and she was grateful for it.

She turned to the men that ran to her help and said, more shakily than she expected: "I apologize, sir. I just needed to clear my head."

"That's understandable," the older one of them said, studying her face. "Just don't overexert yourself, girl."

Lothíriel had to suppress a sudden urge to laugh at his words. Don't overexert yourself? What else was there left to do? Men were dying left and right and most probably would continue to do so well into the next day. The healers were desperately understaffed for this situation and if they didn't overexert themselves…

She almost blurted it all out loud, but instead took another deep breath and remained silent. He is just being nice, she reminded herself.

"I won't," she nodded. "Now if you'll excuse me, I need to get back inside."

She managed an awkward nod and turned to leave the terrace. She quickly put on her mask to conceal her face once more and after hesitating a split second, she entered the gates of her own small hell once more.