She was dreaming.

That much, at least, she knew.

She was dreaming of her mother. Merely a spectator in this dream world, she considered the woman before her with the foreknowledge of her death and the clawing desperation of so many unanswered questions. They had the same tilt to their chin and the same dark red hair that curled slightly at the ends. Her mother's hands were as calloused as her own and she wore the same gear - patched and worn.

Ellissa was pacing the floor of a Lothlorien talan, scowling. It was dark outside. Inside the talan the only light came from a wall sconce. Aiedale, frozen in the dream world, could not move.

"You will go?" came a questioning voice.

That was a very familiar voice, thought Aiedale. Gandalf. But she could not see him, only the restless form of her mother.

"No," said Ellissa. "I will not go with you tomorrow morn."

"Why?" The wizard sounded deeply confused.

Ellissa paused in her pacing, a quiet look passing over her face and easing the lines of anger and frustration from around her eyes.

"My instincts tell me not to," she said slowly. "They tell me I am not meant to journey with you for Erebor and your company of treasure hunters."

"You are hiding something," said the wizard.

The Shadowhunter turned and gave the wizard that look, that inscrutable look of hers that said she had something on her mind but would not say it. Even though she remembered little of her often absent mother, Aiedale remembered that look perfectly. She remembered wondering why her mother would not speak even when it was clear she wanted to.

"We all have secrets, we all hide things," said Ellissa quietly.

From where she was frozen Aiedale saw what the wizard could not have seen: her mother's tears slowly tracking down Ellissa's pale cheeks.

The Shadowhunter woke from the dream to the stillness of early morning.

For a moment she let herself hold onto the dream as if it was water briefly cupped in her hands. But then it was gone. She was too weary and sore to feel much more than a faint twinge of regret.

With a sigh Aiedale opened her eyes. On and on Aragorn had led them the previous day, tireless and swift after the trail of the orcs. The woods about the river were left behind and, as they ran, they came upon long slopes that were hard-edged against a sky streaked red with the fading sun.

It had been a fitting sunset for such a bitter day, thought the Shadowhunter with a swiftly contained wave of anger and remorse. The day had dawned red and it was stained with the blood of a good man - a man who made mistakes but atoned for them. The only comfort, if it could even be considered a comfort, was that Aiedale had, for her part, made sure that not a little black orc blood had been spilt.

The company of four had run onwards into the dusk. Mist had crept along behind them in the forest they had left, and it had clung to the edges of the wide Anduin river, but the sky above them had been clear. Aiedale had taken some solace from the sight of the stars and the moon. Her heart was raw and aching but, as she ran beside Legolas with a heavily panting Gimli a little ways behind, she could for a time leave it behind. Failure stalked her shadow but she refused to look back at it or acknowledge its painful reality.

In the last few hours before dawn they had rested for a brief time. The moon had been quickly sinking towards the horizon but the stars had still been out and Aiedale had collapsed clumsily against a rock where she had claimed a few brief snatches of sleep.

And now, murmured a voice in her mind, you are here…what do you intend to do about it?

Ignoring the barbed comments her subconscious dared send her, Aiedale rose from the cold ground and stretched out her tight muscles. She felt the all too familiar ache of injuries that were not completely healed. The arrow had gone deeper then she was willing to admit and it was not surprising that, even after an iratze, the wound still troubled her. The chill evening air had not helped either, stiffening her muscles and causing a few of her more memorable injuries to twinge.

There was a difference, she told herself as she gathered what remained of her endurance, between power and strength. Power was empty, it took as much as it gave, but strength...strength could drive one to new heights. It could inspire.

"Onwards my friends," said Aragorn as Gimli and Legolas also readied themselves. Even the elf, usually so unruffled, looked dishevelled and pale. Aiedale dared not wonder how awful her own face looked right then after all the fighting and running.

"Here are the tracks that we seek," continued Aragorn. "The trail is clear and we cannot afford to wait."

Aiedale took off after the man as they once more set out after the orcs who had taken two of their company. On and on they ran. They had been running for a few hours and day had come, leaping into the sky as the red rim of the sun rose over the once dark land, before the company stopped. As Aiedale came up over the lip of a ridge they had been climbing, she gasped at the view that suddenly stretched before her.

Grassy plains, dotted with clumps of rock here and there, spread out in a golden wave before her. Never, in all her life, had the Shadowhunter seen so much open space and sky. She felt as if she was a tiny dot, a little speck of black against the turf of this country. A wind stirred her hair. The only barrier upon this new world was a distant line of mountains, tall and imposing even from so far away. But until those snow capped peaks?

Nothing but springy turf and waving strands of grass.

"Rohan. The land of the Horse Lords," said Aragorn and their was something to his voice, a kind of deep respect that gave the Shadowhunter pause. He knew this land, she realized, and cared for it still. "Some evil has come here I fear."

So much space, so much sky and grass in which a person could lose oneself…suddenly the cities of Earth seemed, despite their many glamorous attractions, shoddy and overused. Here on this golden plain the Shadowhunter felt her spirit fly free for a brief, wondrously brief, moment of total freedom and awe. She had never realized how narrow her world was, how tightly leashed she had been kept by the restrictions placed on her kind.

"Look," said Legolas suddenly, "I see something on the plain."

Following his pointing figure Aiedale could make out a large company of moving figures, distant and barely distinguishable from the line where the grasslands met the horizon. "The orcs," she said with a feeling of cold dismay as she took in the distance between their positions. She could just make out the moving bodies of the creatures and the distant flash of their crude weapons.

"Let us be gone then!" said Gimli with a wave of his ax. "Dwarves can go swiftly and we have many leagues to make up."

Aiedale did not say it but, now that she could see their enemies by the light of a new day, the practical side of her mind had kicked in. How exactly, it asked, did they plan on rescuing Merry and Pippen should they catch up with the orcs? The chances of success in such a situation, said her mental voice with an air of superiority, really should be considered. They were not only outnumbered twenty to one but on a rescue mission - retrieval of hostages - not a kill all and be done with it.

One way or the other, thought the Shadowhunter in answer to that smug voice. I WILL.

As the companions once more took off at a run, Aiedale settled for setting her gaze on the horizon and, trying to distract herself and prevent her mind from wandering, Aiedale's mind began to run through the various techniques and methods outlined in a handy little book recently put out into the Shadowhunter community by Silent Brother Anias on the matter of effective interrogation of demons (and the occasional rogue Downworlder although that was never outright said). Most of the techniques didn't involve outright violence but Silent Brother Anias, she thought, didn't need such things to make an impression. She remembered all too well her last meeting with Anias and it made her blood run a few degrees colder at the mere mention. The Silent Brothers were unsettling in every aspect of their appearance and manner but Anias, Aiedale had decided long ago, was the most ghoulish.

Casting a glance around her, Aiedale couldn't help wonder what her companions would think if she told them that she was distracting herself by remembering Anias and his interrogation manual. What would they say if she told them that, to her, it wasn't at all odd that such a how-to guide existed and that it was read by warriors barely out of childhood? Or that Anias was, himself, something out of a nightmare?

Reaching up, Aiedale adjusted the hood of her cloak so that it covered her face in shadow and increased her pace. She already knew something of what they would say and she felt a kind of reluctant - slow, like ice thawing - appreciation for their horror and confusion. She had struggled these passed months to see herself from their eyes mostly, she admitted, because she had thought it was beneath her. Her pride in both her unique abilities and heritage had kept her wedged away from the rest of her companions.

Aiedale wondered now, recalling the encounter with Aragorn after Boromir's death and, even before that, when she returned alone and injured from Moria, if her wariness in the face of their trust that had been more than childish but downright insulting. She knew they pitied her - it had angered her and still did - but her arrogance and secrecy had done nothing to change their perception of her. Perhaps she had been as blind and narrow minded as those Shadowhunters who she despised for their arrogance towards Downworlders.

Perhaps, though no Shadowhunter ever spoke of it out loud, the mundanes really were the lucky ones. They were safe in their sheep-like blindness to the underground battles fought around and for them every single night. Maybe those doubts, sown in Lothlorien during her time with the elves and the Fellowship, had a grain of real truth in them. She knew that she could kill with savage grace, could do it on a moment's notice if it was required of her. Running across this plain with an elf, a dwarf and a man she suddenly felt as if she had been unknowingly chained and shackled, committed without knowing that she was.

Oh no you don't, snapped the always practical survival voice in her head. Don't you dare start opening up that bag of Angel-knows-what. The hobbits are your priority above all else and then getting home.

But the thoughts had been thought. Aiedale mused on them in her subconscious. They were in there and ready to be more fully considered when she wasn't quite as exhausted and emotional.

For some time they ran before Aragorn, who ran with his head down and keen eyes focused on the trail before them, raised a hand and skidded to a stop. The Ranger had turned aside from the main path and was following something it seemed only his eyes could see. Suddenly Aragorn stooped and picked something up from the long grass.

"What is it?" demanded Aiedale as she tried to determine exactly what had caused the Ranger to stop.

"Pippen I think," said the Ranger as he rejoined the others, "for he is smaller than Merry, left this behind and leaves a lighter imprint on the grass. He must have split from the main host to leave us this token of his passage." He held up an object that glittered in the sunlight: the brooch of an elven-cloak.

Aiedale's hand went immediately to the cloak pin at her own throat which resembled the new-opened leaf of a beech-tree, fair and strange in the treeless plain of Rohan. The cold feeling that had chilled her heart lifted for a moment as new hope that, at least a few short hours before, one of those brave, stubborn little hobbits had both their wits and the use of limbs.

"This did not drop by chance," said Aragorn. "I think Pippen left it as a sign for any that might follow."

"Then he is alive," said Gimli whose face was so red and sweaty he looked like tomato. But his voice was as booming as ever when he said, "We do not pursue in vain." Legolas looked more unsure but the elf had the sense not to say anything. Aiedale was quite willing to punch him if he said anything that was depressing.

We are gaining on them, thought Aiedale with a kind of grim satisfaction. And I fully intend to teach these orcs a lesson no matter how outnumbered I am.

"Gimli," said the Shadowhunter as they took up their run once more, "are you alright?" She took in his heavy armour and pack, the idea of running with such cumbersome burdens making her wince.

The dwarf sent her a tired but surprised look, unused to the girl inquiring about his health. "Dwarves can run for a long time," he said stoutly. "Our endurance is legendary."

"Of course," said Aiedale lightly, knowing better then to point out that, however legendary his endurance, Gimli was, out of all of them, the one most clearly taxed by the long run.

The sun climbed to noon as the companions ran on and then slowly dropped down the sky. Light clouds came up from the South and blew gently eastward. A wind came up and then died away as the sun sank. Shadows rose behind and reached out long arms, beckoning the running figures into its concealing darkness.

One day, thought Aiedale, since the fall of Boromir and the breaking of their little company. One day since she had turned away from the power and seductive whisperings of the Ring. One day since she had fought her way through a small army of orcs.

It seemed, however, like an age.

"But there is only one of you assigned to this?" asked the vampire. "What good is only one?"

"Nonsense," replied her uncle. "Better to have a single perfect diamond than a sack full of flawed ones. You will find my niece, Aiedale, more than up for the task."

At long last, as the moon shone it's cool light down on the companions, Aragorn slowed and call a halt. They had come to an outcropping of rocks that provided some shelter on the open, moonlit plains. Gimli didn't even bother with undoing his shield or pack before he collapsed in a crumpled heap, using a rock as a pillow. Legolas was more dignified but his relief to pause the endless run was apparent in the way he let his head fall back, his face relaxing a fraction.

Aiedale, however, was so weary she could not slow herself. She longed to keep running, her mind urging her on even as her body urged her to rest. Part of her worried that once she sat down she may not be able to rise again. So she compromised. Walking over to a rock she leaned her body against the rough stone and closed her eyes. Aware of Legolas and Aragorn murmuring wearily in elvish behind her.

A cool breeze toyed with her sweaty, matted hair. She wasn't just running to find Merry and Pippen, Aiedale knew. It had lingered in her mind, the dream of her mother had left her with an odd feeling. She wanted the truth, the real truth. It had been there when she lingered in Lothlorien, been there in every conversation with every elf who had claimed to remember Elissa.

You are weak, came the voice inside her head. Yes, she thought, she was. Shadowhunters weren't supposed to be caught up like she was. They were supposed to be fearless, answer every challenge and always avoid emotional involvement. When had that become impossible? She had always been good at it, always able to keep her distance, always impassive and aloof, accepting praise and punishment, love and pain with the same level headed detachment. Knowing that she bound to the world of Shadowhunters by blood, by associations and allies and obligations. But always, always knowing that they would not stand in the way of her mandate, her duty.

She had once played the games so well. Had once kept so many pieces in play, fooled herself into thinking she knew all the lies and half-truths that made up her shadow world. She could still remember being named to the Council because she showed 'a knack for seeing the greater picture, keeping her mind on the end goal, always willing to use anticipated and unorthodox methods' or something along those lines.

"You should sleep," came Aragorn's quiet voice behind her.

"I will," she said shortly. It was a relief when, instead of arguing, Aragorn turned away and she heard him settle down, the quiet rustling of his cloak.

Aiedale glanced up at the bright stars. Something niggled in the back of her mind, the same sense that had kept her so on edge while they journeyed down the Anduin River. She was being watched, something was coming. There was tension, an air of anticipation that set her teeth on edge.

I need to sleep, she thought firmly as she turned her gaze from the stars to the distant horizon. I'm imagining thin...

She froze.

It couldn't be. But it was.

A flash of white light. A signal rune that lit the sky to the west for a brief moment before it vanished. The lines were perfectly outlined for a brief instant. She knew that flash, knew the distinctive pattern as well as she knew how to throw a knife.

Come. That rune said. Come.

She had no choice. With a quick glance at her sleeping companions, Aiedale drew out her own stele and carved two runes into her own skin: one for strength and the other for speed. She would have time, she thought, before Aragorn and the others woke.

But, even if she didn't, she had to answer the call. She was a Shadowhunter.