"Trusting in anyone who is not Nephilim is a weakness," said Inquisitor Herondale, her severe face made almost skull like by her tightly pulled back gray hair.
Aiedale merely bowed her head, withdrawing before she could listen to more of Inquisitor's deeply depressing one line verbal slaps. It seemed, sometimes, that the Clave's head leaders wanted to drill her weaknesses and painful cost of such failings in again and again. She had heard that line before and, yet, she found herself mulling over it again. Was it a flaw to trust outside of the narrow circle of warriors she trained and hunted with? Was it simply human? Was this simply another way for the Clave to manipulate her and others as they asked the impossible?
Always, she thought, it was games within games, giving her a glimpse of something more and then forcing her to push it away, to make it seem wrong. Always trying to make it seem wrong to look beyond the Clave and the standard operating procedures handed down from generation to generation. They seemed to fear that any move she made outside of the narrow options given to her would lead to complete disaster.
Yes, some things were her fault…it was her weakness that had caused…no she would not dwell on that. She had let Downworlders and the occasional clear-sighted mundane in because she thought she could trust them and because it seemed right, the logical thing to do.
She refused to be told that it wasn't. That allowing them close, involving them and looking out for them was somehow wrong and dangerous.
The grasslands merged in a single dark landscape as she ran. The gray elvish cloak blending in against the gray darkness. She was a ghost, a shadow in the grass. The waxing moon was riding high in the sky and the occasional outcroppings of rock she passed were black. It was a gray, formless world without mark or measure. A deep darkness that Aiedale found oddly comforting.
She was nothing out here. No allegiances and no loyalties - no oaths to bind and hold her.
At last, coming to a small ridge, Aiedale came to stop. The moon was a thin sliver of silver above her, the light too dim to illuminate much of the grass plains around her. But her senses tingled, it wasn't far now. Whoever…whatever had set the rune off was close. Now it was time for caution.
There was a small hollow below her, a few clumps of bushy shrub-like trees providing the only cover for miles and miles on the open grassland. A large rock stuck up from the grass at the bottom of the hollow, its surface worn smooth by countless winter storms and spring rains. She picked her way down the slope, senses straining to catch any telltale sign.
As she paused at the bottom of the hollow mid-step and watchful, she froze. A form, shimmering slightly and with blurry edges, was walking towards her from the opposite side of the small dip. Her gaze still as intense, those eyes an unflinching whirlpool of focused intent that trapped Aiedale in their depths.
"You came," said the woman in a low, whispering voice. "I knew you would."
Aiedale let out a pained gasp. It was…no it couldn't be. But it was…
"It's me," said Elissa softly. "The barriers between the living and the dead are thin in this world. I have a little time…enough I think to answer some of your questions." The Shadowhunter stepped closer, her form wavered in the light cast by the glowing witch light held tightly in Aiedale's hand. Elissa was wearing Shadowhunter gear but it was, mercifully, intact and the only visible knife at her side was sheathed. But it was her although the memory her daughter carried of her was hazy, nothing more than impressions and sound.
"I…" Aiedale couldn't summon any words. Emotion - a mix of anger, grief, and pain - had rendered her speechless.
"Come sit," said Elissa, moving to a large, flat rock. Wordlessly, her body shaking slightly, Aiedale sat down by the ghostly form of a mother she had not seen since that fateful evening when Elissa had screamed at her petrified daughter to run and take her little brother with her. And Aiedale had nearly not been able to.
That had been the most wrenching, grueling, terrifying day of her life - worse even than the memories of Alicante in flames or the Balrog. It was an event that had reverberated through her life right up to the present. It had defined and shaped her although she had done her best to lock away the details, to blunt the edge of the lesson it had drilled into her.
"You've grown so much," said Elissa softly. "You remind me so much of your father, sometimes."
"Everyone says I am like you," said Aiedale in a low voice. She had to say something, her eyes never flicking away from her mother's calm face and serene eyes.
"In looks," said Elissa with a faint smile as she rested a weightless hand on Aiedale's soldier. "And you fight like me, I suppose. But I see your father when I look into your eyes. He was always good at seeing the larger picture, never distracted. All or nothing - just like you. Never afraid to act."
Aiedale winced. The observation unlocking a whole whirlpool of emotions and memories. She had made a promise to herself after that god awful night that she would never ever freeze up again. She would risk the danger of impulsive, rash action over the danger of not acting. Because the last time she hadn't done anything - although what a small child could have done against a Greater Demon was anyone's guess - was to see her mother atomize into a haze of deep scarlet as she screamed at her to run.
"Why am I here, mama?" The question slipped out, her voice cracking slightly with desperation, trying hard to keep herself in the present. She felt desolate, never more in need of her mother then right then. And, for the first time in recent memory, she had her mother - her real mother - right there. "Since I've been here…I…I've done so much remembering. I even dreamed of you. That's never happened. I don't know…I'm just impulsive, I suppose."
"Hush," said Elissa softly, gently stroking Aiedale's cheek with her weightless, almost transparent hand. Her eyes remained calm, her face serene and, although Aiedale could not feel her mother's touch, she instinctively relaxed. "You are here for a very important reason. Just as I was before you. You aren't impulsive, Aiedale. You have reasons for the things you do even the most harebrained."
The woman lowered her hand, gently lifting the gleaming jewel pendant set in silver that swung on a thin chain along with the Darklighter signet ring. "You are wearing it."
The jewel gleamed softly, seeming to emit its own light as if it had come alive for a brief moment. For that second Elissa's form seem to become more substantial, her eyes more vivid.
"It was given to me…" said Aiedale uncertainly. Her aunt had left it for her in a velvet box on her nightstand. She remembered seeing it on that nightstand, glinting slightly in the dawn light. There had been no instructions, her aunt not even acknowledging it when a very young Aiedale appeared with it on at breakfast.
It had been a part of her mother, a defining feature that a young Aiedale could recall with perfect clarity even as she slowly forgot the exact curves and outlines of her mother's face. She had been so young and it was easier to forget, to dull the edges of grief and pain by forgetting those details. So very young but the jewel had been a comfort, a warm and reassuring weight around her neck. It had become so much a part of her that she could not imagine not wearing it.
"No," said Elissa at last but her voice was heavy with emotion. "I left it for you just as my mother left it for me. I told my sister to give it to you if I…well, at any rate, it comes from this world." Aiedale raised her eyes surprised, her mind reeling at this new revelation. "Yes," continued Elissa, "it comes from this world."
"But what…"
"The story of how it came to our family has been lost to time," continued Elissa quietly, "but the power of the stone has not. It brought you here - just as it brought me."
"It's never done anything," said Aiedale quietly. "It isn't like the Lightwood's jewel that warns when demons are near or the one…"
Elissa laughed. "It is a subtle power, Aiedale. It has given you strength and clarity of vision when you needed it - it balances, reminds us of those we love. It guided you here when you needed to come." Elissa dropped her hand to her lap, her gaze never leaving her daughter's face, a new urgency coming to her ghostly features. Her eyes, always intense, burned with a focused energy as if she was trying, through force of will alone, to make her daughter understand. "And it is about balance that I have come to speak to you now."
"The world is out of balance, isn't it?" said Aiedale. She was only confirming something she had already come to understand. Middle Earth was not right and hadn't been for a long time.
"Yes," said Elissa. "There are things you have to find out, Aiedale. I can't tell you now…some things you need to find out for yourself. "
"What do I do?" demanded Aiedale. She couldn't stop the angry note that entered voice, the frustration that threatened to cloud her judgement.
"Instinct has guided you this far," said Elissa calmly, "it led you to the hobbits and it brought you along on the Fellowship. Instinct told you that this quest matters. Now you must trust it once more. Must trust yourself and you must hurry - time is running out."
"Why can't you tell me? What about Frodo?" An oath had been sworn after all.
"You cannot help him anymore," said Elissa. "You did everything you could for him and Sam. Now it is time to make a choice about where you stand. Just as I choose before you when Lord Celeborn asked me to accompany them in a daring campaign against the Necromancer."
"That isn't everything," said Aiedale with the shrewd awareness of someone who spent one too many hours wondering what people weren't saying, "you didn't come this far to say that to me."
Elissa seemed to withdraw slightly, a brief flash of pain crossing her face. "No," she said quietly, "I suppose it isn't.…didn't." She was silent for a long moment, "Things are coming to a head, Aiedale. Forces that were never meant to interact have touched, brought together by Sauron's malice. Our world and this one have always been close, that was why I came here to face the Necromancer. The White Council and I delayed the final confrontation but the barriers have gotten thinner since the evil unleashed by Valentine and his son ripped our own world apart…it started something - something that needs to be stopped. I have so much more I want to say but…"
"I must find it out for myself," said Aiedale not surprised but frustrated. "You can't just give me a full briefing, can you?"
Elissa smiled slightly, "I wish I could. I wish I could give you a full-length report complete with schematics. But I can't."
"Why?"
"It isn't why but who," Elissa was gazing at her very intently. "There are great many interested and invested parties in the outcome of this conflict, Aiedale. Many of whom have watched you with great interest for a long time. They were there in Alicante, watching and waiting. They were there that night in Paris when you, your brother and cousins were on a routine patrol. But knowing too much brings its own kind of danger."
Aiedale shivered although she wasn't cold. She was familiar with reading between the lines, of games played within games but she was out of her depth in this one. These wheels behind wheels, lies, and secrets wrapped behind more lies and secrets unfamiliar to her. It sounded as if she had been out of her depth for a long time. But she did know that she had been watched, felt the weight of something although she wasn't sure what it was for a long time. The same weighty feeling she had sensed when she escaped Moria so long ago.
"It…they saved me in Moria?"
Elissa smiled mysteriously, "What do you think, Aiedale?" Her gaze hardened, "But I suggest you never tempt fate like that again."
For a moment Aiedale was forcibly reminded of the countless times her aunt had fixed her charges with that exact same look: a narrowing of the eyes, a thinning of the lips and warning delivered with a mix of perfect seriousness and genuine concern. To see it now on her mother's ghostly face sent a mix of pain and regret through the young Shadowhunter.
But she pulled herself together, recalling how she used to focus in the midst of a midnight briefing on a raid that was to be conducted. "Anything else?" she forced out past the lump of emotion clogging up her throat, the words catching on the lump of regret which had begun to coalesce in her.
But the ghost did not seem to hear her or willfully had chosen not to. "So brave," said Elissa. "You have been so brave, my daughter. I want you to know that; no matter what happens and what you learn. Know that you are brave and I love you."
"I am lost," she whispered, not knowing what else to say and unable to formulate a single one of the many, many questions that she should ask. Her mind had chosen that exact moment to go perfectly blank. She wished that she could actually feel her mother's ghostly hand, wished she could recall some of those conversations she had dreamed of having through the years. "I can't see where I am going anymore. I've spent too long in the dark."
"Darkness would not care. You know that."
"But I am…"
"You are not lost," Elissa said again with more firmness. "You are finding your way - finding yourself. You still care. Somehow, despite everything, you still care. Still love." A sad smile flitted across the woman's face, "If I could have saved you and your brother from this fate I would have. But we are Shadowhunters as you say. It is a hard lot in life, rewarding for those who remember who they are but so easy to get lost and to forget about what really matters. You know this inside yourself Aiedale. You always have."
"I have to go back."
"No," said Elissa in a calm voice as if the words were not earth shattering, "you, like me, have a choice."
Aiedale met her mother's gaze, so like her own but so different. The words utterly shocking for her tired mind. A choice about what?
"If I do what is asked of me there is no choice. If I do what the Clave would have me do there is no choice."
"There is always a choice," said Elissa with complete conviction. "Just as there was choice when you took your first rune and just as there was choice when you agreed to help Frodo. It is brave," she continued, "to exchange everything you know for a slim chance of something you don't. To give away trust and faith to those you value and hope that they will give them back."
"It isn't fair." She couldn't keep the bitterness from her voice, couldn't even hold back the childish words.
"Nothing is," said Elissa, "but we have a responsibility. Remember the lessons you have learned. Remember that for each new strategy, for each new pattern there are others being set in place. Don't become trapped."
The words were ominous and Aiedale felt her body grow colder, her heart beat a little faster. The ghost of her mother stood and so did Aiedale, her muscles protesting after so long sitting. "You need to go now," said Elissa. "Your companions need you - those you know and those you have yet to meet. Much is about to…" Elissa broke off suddenly and then shrugged, "You will see for yourself."
Aiedale turned her gaze away, "I will go back."
She meant far more than simply back to the sparse camp where her companions were sleeping. Her words sounding more like a challenge then a statement as if she dared her mother to argue with her.
Elissa smiled very softly, not rising to the bait. "Perhaps…but remember, Aiedale, the future is never certain for those who walk the shadows. You know what it is to be unmade, to have your identity reshaped. You have a choice now."
Aiedale's eyes narrowed, "What do you mean? You speak of choices, mother, but I do not know what you mean. A choice about staying in Middle Earth? A choice about whether I fight demons or not? What is the choice?"
Elissa shook her head, "I have spoken too much as it is. You will have to find out for yourself. It is better that way, more true and more honest. And you have to know in the end, Aiedale. I know that you will know what is right and what is wrong but you must choose where you stand and where you die." She raised a hand in farewell, "Go. Go before the moon sinks any lower."
A heartbeat later, a single blink, just as Aiedale opened her mouth to say one more thing to the mother she had thought long since left behind only to realized that she never had, Elissa was gone. The thin shreds of moonlight illuminated a still grassland and Aiedale was very much alone.
Alone.
Again.
"I…" but words failed her. Sinking back so that she was once again sitting on the smooth rock, Aiedale stared numbly at her hands. The night was cold, she realized dimly, and the elvish cloak wasn't very warm. Funny how she hadn't realized how cold she was until then.
Loyalty, commitment, devotion…
It had been drilled into her. All of that focus and determination in service to the Clave, shaped and melded into a single intent she had never dared question. To the organization that had operated for thousands of years in the shadows of her world and of which she was just another part, another warrior who would come and go. To the organization that would barely acknowledge her sacrifice but would demand her service even after death. Her mother seemed to want to put all that into question and had in no uncertain terms. For Middle Earth? Or was it for her sake? Or was that it at all?
Was she clinging, even after all she had seen and done, to the idea that she'd done what she'd had to do not only to survive but to serve? That the slate and the soul were wiped clean. That she could face anyone and anything with a conscious clear of any doubt because it was right. She was right. Her choices were the right ones.
When did the ends seem to fail to justify the means? Once upon a time, she would not even have stopped to think about whether or not it had merely been convenient to pledge herself to the Clave or whether her actions were wrong. Now she did. When she should have felt the deepening of commitment and loyalty - the deepening of determination to return to Earth and unravel this whole mystery - she felt…nothing, just detachment.
She rose from the stone. She felt very alone and, suddenly, very tired. It was too much to think about right then. But she had a nasty feeling she would have to. That her angry words to herself about not lying to herself were coming around to bite her. She had told herself she would tell the truth, no more lies and secrecy but maybe there was too much to be undone.
I have one goal right now, she thought determinedly, and that is to rescue the hobbits.
But it wasn't enough. That one goal could not drown out her mother's words, the intensity of her gaze and the whispering voices of past doubts that now seemed to think they could slink out of the shadows of her mind.
It was a long run back to her companions, much longer than it had seemed when she had first left. However, like the endless runs she had done in Rivendell as she waited for the Fellowship to depart, it quieted her mind. In the cool, still hour before dawn she tried to out run it all.
She entered the camp as the first light of dawn was beginning to lighten the sky to the East. Her companions were still asleep, weariness etched deeply into their features.
Her mother's words continued to echo in her head. As she flopped gracelessly to the cold ground, she could not stop the thoughts that whirled in her head like autumn leaves in a wind. She knew that, like the Shadowhunters that had come before her, she balanced on the edge of control. It was a knife-edge balance that she maintained through force of will alone. Nothing was healed, nothing was dealt with, the cracks beneath her facade were still there, fractures too deep to repair.
She reached up, her hand closing around the jewel that had rested for years just above her heart.
An imbalance…she knew intimately the danger that threatened her world and was coming to understand the danger in this one. If her mother was right and those evils had mingled, were feeding off of each other then things really were out of balance. Against all of this evil, this unrestrained malice she felt very small, a twig trying to hold back flood waters. But she was a very determined person. If she played her hand right and if she recalled every lesson - every glorious dream - those things that she had never quite been able to leave behind…well it would have to be enough for now.
Because she hadn't quite shaken those dreams it seemed. It was those dreams of the golden fields of Alicante, her brother's laugh and the kindness of friends - dreams of peace free from demons and death - now stood as a bulwark against the darkness that wanted to pull her down.
Aragorn rose, shaking his head and rubbing his tired face with one hand. Legolas stirred as well. Dawn was coming, thought the Shadowhunter, but she didn't have the heart to move from her half lying place on the very edge of the rocky outcropping where they had paused. She closed her eyes briefly, half wishing she had never seen the flash of the rune signal and had had a chance to rest her weary body.
No rest for the wicked, she thought with grim humour.
"Where have you been?" asked Aragorn. He took her in, tried to determine what was different but was unable to pin it down. Because she was different, more solid and more sure but even more tired somehow to - a bone weary exhaustion in her once vibrant eyes. But he was too weary himself to figure out the girl that was a contradiction wrapped about in a sense of refined if restless power.
"Nowhere important," said Aiedale. She turned away, fingering the stele hidden in her sleeve. Validations were the sign of lies and she wasn't ready to share her evening's adventure.
They would never see her as she really was, thought Aiedale. Could not quite understand how the training and experience - the expectation of danger and betrayal - had become so deeply ingrained that she could never quite step free of it. She balanced on the brink of darkness and light. But they didn't need to understand that - that was where she had made her mistake in Rivendell and then later in Moria. They provided her with friendship and kindness. With their help she could keep the balance, could use the power that so easily could turn to darkness to preserve the light.
It was easier then it should have been.
As she waited for the others to prepare themselves, Aiedale examined the horn that Galadriel had given her. It was a work of art, but understated and unassuming. The elegant designs and silver accents may have been pretentious had it not been for the traces of use that had worn the silver and stylized designs mirror smooth in places. She had never had a horn before. But this one, she thought, was by far the most beautiful she had ever seen.
She wondered as she looked at it what had happened to Boromir's broken horn. The great horn of Gondor had been broken in two during the fight, its great strength shattered by the Urk-hai's terrible strength.
I'm sorry, she thought. You shouldn't have died like that, Boromir. I didn't realize until far too late how dear I counted you or how important the Fellowship was…is.
She wouldn't make that mistake again.
Her companions were clearly uneasy about where she had been but no one had the willpower to force her to explain. So, once they were all gathered, Aiedale turned her gaze to the ground and began to run. She was aware in every fiber of her body that there was a storm coming, that something was moving closer every day. Each warning twinge of her instincts, each signal of danger leading her on. It didn't scare her, this sense of something happening just beyond her awareness. Besides even if it brought her death…well that was easy. She had spent a night in the company of her dead mother, after all.
The warlock was regarding her with something close to pity. "You believe absolutely that for your freedom to exist then nothing else can. You blindly chase the destruction of your enemy. You see," said the warlock, "you suffer the worst, most terrible of all vices: you believe yourself to be just."
She recoiled, stung by the barbed accusation, at the unexpected ferocity of it.