She took another slug of bourbon.
She wasn't much of a drinker but she had bought the bottle on the way back to the Institute thinking it would go well with her mood. And it did. She sat there, by the fire and stared out at the snow slowly drifting down.
There was a small Christmas tree perched on the window sill - set up by her younger cousin, Eleanor, and it looked quite forlorn without decorations. She pulled the small golden star off the bottle and propped it up on the highest branch. After considering the tree for a long moment, she returned to her chair by the fire and found a paperback novel abandoned by someone else. The reports waited for her but she eschewed them for the trashy romance.
But, as she reached for the bottle of bourbon mid way through a detailed description of the main love interest's golden locks, her hand brushed over an abandoned throwing star. She paused, stared at the gleaming metal with its elaborate scrolling on the polished metal.
It had the gift of timing, she mused darkly.
Lifting it she glanced at the tree. It was so light in her thin fingers, deadly and sharp but abandoned, just another throwing star left aimlessly by another warrior to careless to organize their gear. Sighting down her arm, angling the star just so…she aimed at the top of the little Christmas tree and sent the star right off the top, impaling it in the fine dark wood of the wall…
Legolas was the one who warned their company first: "It is a red dawn. Strange things await us by the eaves of the forest. Good or evil, I do not know; but we are called forward."
They had paused for a brief moment on the wide plain just as the sun began to peak over the horizon and Aiedale was struggling to catch her breath. She didn't pay much attention, too weary and hot to care much for the elf's words. Dawn had come but it was no less bitter then the suns that had risen before and even Gimli commented on it in a rushed, hoarse voice.
Aragorn shook his head, his grey eyes deeply troubled. "There is some will that lends speed to our foes and sets an unseen barrier before us: a weariness that is in the heart more than in the limb. Sauroman is set against us. "
Aiedale raised her head, "The more you think about it the more power you give him."
Aragorn sighed heavily, "We must go on. If I remember rightly, these downs run eight leagues or more to the north, and then north-west to the issuing of the Entwash there lies still a wide land. Another fifteen leagues it may be."
Aiedale winced.
Another full day of running may - if they were lucky - might bring them within striking distance of the orcs but they were all tired, even Legolas. And she did not want to meet the orcs at night. Did not want to meet them when her hands felt numb at her sides and her body sluggish. An inner voice was continuing its non stop muttering about how unlikely a successful rescue mission would be at this point. Weak, exhausted by the run and emotionally unstable with her dead mother's whispers making her question her skill set and motives…not exactly rescue mission material it snarled at her.
"They are taking the hobbits to Isengard," said Legolas grimly his eyes tracking the movements of their enemies.
If she ever met Saruman…
Over the wide solitude of the land they passed and their elven-cloaks faded against the background of green and golden fields; even in the cool sunlight of mid-day few but Elvish eyes would have spotted them. The companions did not pause again until the sun sank and the shadows of evening fell like a curtain. The only thing visible in the darkness were the distant hulking shapes of the Mountains of Mist and their forest at their feet. When dawn finally broke it was bare and cloudless, pale with no warmth.
Once more, like she had every morning since that horrific day in Parth Galen, she rose gathered together her cloak and some lembas, ready to start moving again only to pause. Something making her stop, cast her gaze to the land around her not in search of orcs but for some other reason yet unknown to her. Her eyes, tired from straining to see the distant horizon, struggled to focus as she turned to gaze back at her companions who had made no move to follow her. She glanced at Aragorn, a dull warning making her weary mind and body pause. The Ranger's eyes were following the gentle curve of a distant river which originated in the dark mass of forest that lay many miles away. He was listening intently and, beside him, Legolas was gazing out as well, the elf's pale hair gleaming in the light as his deep blue eyes scanned the tawny landscape.
Aiedale moved to stand beside them, straining her tired but rune enhanced eyesight to catch a glimpse of what they saw.
She gasped.
It was a shadow on the grassland, a blur of motion that was moving away from the distant forest and further out onto the wide expanse of grassland. Horsemen. They were turning away from the river and drawing near the downs. Many horsemen, the first light of dawn catching the tips of their spears and making them twinkle like minute stars. The horses were tall and strong; their coats glistened in the weak sunlight. Far behind them, she realized with cold dread, was a dark smoke twisting up into the early morning sky.
Fire.
Not a good kind of fire that cleansed and renwed, but one that made her think of bodies and funeral pyres. A fire that destroyed and nothing more. She recalled Legolas's words from earlier about the red dawn and what might await them at the distant line of trees. Their Fellowship had had ill luck with red dawns, she thought grimly.
"Riders," said Aiedale quietly. She turned to Aragorn, "They must be of Rohan?"
Legolas shaded his eyes with a hand, "There are one hundred and five. They can't be more than five leagues distant."
Aiedale let out a breath she had been holding. She hoped the Riders avoided them. An encounter with them would be a delay and any delay may prove catastrophic. She sank back, her eyes clouding with frustrated tears. Normally she would have taken this in stride, set other considerations aside and found a way to mitigate the potential risks. But she was off balance, each action and emotion coloured with a mixture of exhaustion and self-doubt.
Feeling like the world was coming undone one disaster at a time, Aiedale followed the other three down the hill where they would be an easy mark against the rapidly lightning sky and to more defensible ground. They waited, cloaks wrapped around them, for the Riders to approach.
"What do you know of these horsemen, Aragorn" asked Gimli after an extended pause.
Aiedale turned, her curiosity briefly igniting. It had been a long time since she had been given run of Imaldris's extensive library and there hadn't been much about Rohan. Lord Erestor, who had managed the library, had informed her that it was partly due to oral nature of Rohan's culture and its reputation in Gondor of being a backward heathen place of wild men with no sense of culture or law. What she did know was that it was a land of horses and golden-haired men who placed the lives of their horses as equal to their own. Helpful in some ways if one was trying to get a broad picture of the place in a two-month stint of intensive study but also not helpful in the slightest, she thought darkly. Nothing detailed about their culture, mannerisms, correct way of approaching and negotiating; in other words, she mused darkly, the sort of useful information that allowed one to make a good first impression and avoid a spear in the gut.
"I have been among them," said Aragorn after a long pause. "They are proud and wilful, but they are true-hearted and bold. Look - they approach."
It was true. The Riders were now quite close, the pounding of many hooves making the ground tremble slightly. He stepped forward from the shadow of the hillside, calling out in a loud voice: "What news from the North, Riders of Rohan?"
And suddenly Aiedale, too exhausted to realize quite what was happening before it did, was surrounded by horses and men - it happened so fast that she was momentarily unable to take it all in. Horses with manes tossing in the wind and men with pale hair and tall spears of ash and burnished skirts of mail. The men rode with astonishing speed and skill, checking their horses and bringing them around so that the three companions were completely surrounded by a ring of horsemen moving in a running circle, round and round them, and drawing ever inwards. It was an ever shifting, ever moving blur of horses expertly ridden by tall men.
Aiedale wished she could disappear in the ground, that the grass would just swallow her up and pop her back up a few miles closer to the orcs and her hobbit friends.
Without a word or cry, the Riders halted. A thicket of spears pointed towards the strangers. Then one rode forward, a man whose helm had a white horsetail. "Who are you, and what are you doing in Rohan?"
"I am called Strider," answered Aragorn. "I came out of the North. My companions and I are hunting Orcs."
The Rider leaped from his horse. Giving his spear to another who rode up and dismounted, he was wearing impressive armour and a dark green cloak embroidered around the edges with gold thread. A commanding officer, thought Aiedale, of some rank and clearly well respected. He had the look of a man who had gained confidence through exposure to a hostile environment, a man who no longer owed anything to anyone. He questioned them coldly, his accent reminiscent of Boromir's as he spoke his title and rank: Eomer son of Eomund, Third Marshal of Riddermark.
Gimli, leaning heavily against his ax, snorted, "Give me your name horse master, and I'll give ye' mine."
For a moment the Captain simply glared but then he stalked forward, his blue eyes snapping with anger. "I would cut off your head, Dwarf, if it stood but a little higher from the ground."
Legolas reacted so swiftly that the movement was almost invisible, his bow up, the elf snapped, "You would die before your stroke fell."
Aiedale restrained a sigh as Aragorn stepped in between the two Fellowship companions and the Captain. Men, she thought darkly. Men!
Aragorn, with a respectful move of his hand and a slight incline of his head, replied evenly, "We are seeking out companions, Lord Eomer. They were taken by a band of Orcs some days ago and we have been tracking them since."
The Rider cast a wondering glance over the small group, his eyes displaying a mix of disbelief and annoyance. "Who do you serve?"
"I serve no man," said Aragorn, "but the servants of Sauron I pursue into whatever land they may go."
"An elf, a dwarf, a man and a woman," said the man with a shake of his head. "These are strange days. Tell me: what business does a girl have with an elf, a dwarf and a man?"
Aiedale met the challenging gaze of Eomer.
"I am Aiedale Darklighter," she said cooly but not disrespectfully. He raised an eyebrow, a look crossing his face that she didn't like at all.
For a brief second reflex, spurred by exhausted frustration, took over and Aiedale felt her mind subconsciously calculating strengths and weaknesses; how to stand against a man twice her height and more than that in weight. He would be much slower then she was. His thought patterns and reaction time made rigid and slow by a deeply ingrained fighting style better suited to mounted combat.
She knew she could.
Knew that she would rather act first, drawing out one of her long, slightly curved knives which were tucked behind her quiver. That it would be as natural as breathing, a state of utter familiarity. The hilt, the moving and shifting of her balance, perfectly balanced and timed. The first swing would come from her left at shoulder height; an opener, a test of reflex -
She pulled herself back sharply, reminded herself that she was not only vastly outnumbered but had no reason, none at all, to act aggressively.
What would happen if she snapped? If she gave rein to instinct and cold, hard Shadowhunter ruthlessness? She had seen it happen before, seen warriors lose the balance, forget that not everyone was an enemy and react without thinking or awareness of the consequence. She had seen it actively encouraged by certain members of the Clave, had been told multiple times that she thought too much…
Eomer had already looked away from her, dismissing her. He didn't know that she was considering the best way to fight him, didn't know how easy it would have been for her to kill, how clean…or how brutal.
"Lady Aiedale had journeyed with us for many miles," said Aragorn calmly. She was aware of the stern glance he cast her way or the subtle way Legolas angled himself so that he was closer to her side. Perhaps she had not been as subtle as she thought, her companion's knowing her well enough to see the telltale signs of a possible confrontation.
She was so caught up in her thoughts that she lost track of the conversation as Aragorn explained their situation to Eomer, only snapping back when Gimli inquired about the hobbits.
The rider replied directly and with little emotion: They had not seen any hobbits. It had been a night raid, quick and fast and brutal. No orc had been left alive and the Rider could not say whether or not the hobbits had been there. There had been, he repeated, no sign of the Halflings and they had searched all of the bodies in an effort to determine what their purpose in Rohan had been.
Her heart gave a great lurch. A great wave of sadness and grief making her heart skip a beat and her lungs constrict with the force of the emotion. She stumbled slightly, the world spinning around her in a dizzying blur of colours as tears threatened to fall down her cheeks.
Do not show weakness, hissed a voice, ever, you fool.
But how could she not mourn this loss? How could she not allow her grief and pain to be felt? To acknowledge that it was real and that she felt the loss of those hobbits?
No one was looking at her, no one saw her take a shaky gulp of air as she closed her eyes briefly. The horsemen were focused on the exchange between Aragorn and their Captain. And no one needed to see, she thought firmly. But a part of her was tired of grieving alone, she always seemed to.
"…may these horses bring you better fortune then their masters," came the words of the golden haired Rohan warrior. They penetrated the dense cloud of anger and pain that had temporarily rendered the Shadowhunter deaf.
She shook her head slightly, there was a rushing in her ears and head and glanced up at the golden haired warrior.
"My company chafes to be away and every moment you tarry lessens your hope. I ask only this: when your quest is achieved, or is proven vain, return with the horses over the Entwade to Meduself, the high house in Edoras."
"You have my word," said Aragorn.
Aiedale saw a great many dark and doubtful glances be exchanged among Eomer's men who clearly felt is was sort of insult for a Rohan horse to be given to strangers no matter how temporary the arrangement. Only one, however, dared speak openly to his leader.
"It may be well enough for this lord of Gondor," said the man riding his horse close to Eomer, "but who has heard of a horse of the Mark being given to a Dwarf?" His eyes flicked briefly to Aiedale but something about her face clearly gave him pause and he did not continue.
"No one," snapped Gimli clearly as impatient to be gone as the others were. "And do not trouble horse master: no one will ever hear of it."
And so it was that the companions found themselves mounted and moving with great haste towards the still smoking pyre and the edge of the forest. Gimli rode behind Legolas who had discarded the horse, Arod, saddle and bridle in favour of riding him bareback. The elf's way with the horse earned him respect, Aiedale had noted. She rode behind Aragorn on a horse called Hasufel.
Aiedale hadn't ridden for months but there was something comforting in the rocking, shifting gate of the horse underneath her. It lulled her, made her relax because it was impossible to stay rigid as a board on a horse. One had to be fluid, move with the forward momentum. She kept her face buried in Aragorn's Lothlorien cloak not wanting to look out over the empty grasslands and the low grey clouds that had come over the Wold from the west. Ahead of them, looming ever nearer, were the tree-clad slopes of Fangorn.
Finally, as the afternoon was beginning to wane, they came to the eaves of the forest and in an open glade among the first trees they found the fire built by the riders. It was still hot and Aiedale felt bile rise in her throat as the ashes floated through the air. Beside the smoldering fire were a pile of helms and mail, cloven shields and broken swords. Further away, not far from the river which came streaming out from the edge of the wood, was a mound covered with fresh-cut white flowers and planted fifteen spears.
Aiedale slipped off Hasufel and left her companions to search closer to the pyre. She, instead, walked over to the mound, knowing that she was little use in determining the tracks and play of battle on grass and would only disturb the ground more if she tried.
She stopped just beside the mound, staring down at the freshly turned dirt and the white flowers that had been picked from close to the river bank and scattered among the spears. Merry and Pippin's faces playing through her mind…the joys, the sorrows, the triumphs that they had shared tinged with the pain of what she feared had happened to them.
The Shadowhunter shook her head, hands playing with the buckle of her quiver before falling still. The chill air was heavy with the choking smell of burning and death. The taste of ashes filled her mouth. It made her feel even more unbalanced, recalled to mind the helpless grief she had felt after Alicante and the battle with Valentine.
I'm not helpless, she snarled to herself but it sounded weak.
If she had been home she would already be moving, already planning a midnight hunt through the crowds of part goers. She would seek the neon lights, the raucous, animated noise of the clubs like the popular La Java or the music in back rooms on side streets where only native-born Parisians lingered, places you could vanish, nameless and faceless in the strobe lights and cigarette smoke. Always cigarette smoke in Paris, great clouds of it that wafted and billowed and chocked you if you weren't used to it…the way the ashes from the cigarettes would fall on the floor.
Anything to break the silence which she carried.
But she was standing here, staring down at a freshly turned mound and she couldn't run away and she couldn't turn to her usual methods of downing out the silence.
And she knew that even if she had been back on Earth with all those usual methods readily available that wouldn't have been real life and she wouldn't have confronted anything. What was real for every other person - for every mundane - around her would have simply been cover as she went about her real business. Something to be observed from a distance with a kind of fascination and disgust. Something to be accessed for information, or emulated for camouflage or used like any other tool to hunt a demon.
But this was real, she thought, and there was no evading it or disengaging from it. There was no running away from it, either.
At the edge of this ancient forest by this freshly made grave for fifteen men she didn't know, Aiedale had the distinct feeling she had changed although she did not yet know how.
She turned away, cast her gaze back to the funeral pyre and her companions who were still searching tirelessly for any sign of their missing Hobbits. She joined them, moving away from the freshly made grave and back to the still smouldering heap of ashes and blackened bones. Purposefully not looking at it, Aiedale scanned the ground and saw only a jumble of tracks - it had been a swift ambush on the part of the Riders of Rohan. She could make neither heads nor tails of them and nor could her companions it seemed.
"We can do no more," said Gimli. The dwarf's eyes flicked to the ashy bones of the orcs and said, "I would guess that the burned bones of the hobbits are now mingled with the Orcs."
Aiedale flinched.
"We should stay here for now," said Legolas with a look towards the forest. "At least until morning comes."
They all began to move away from the field of battle, towards a small stand of birch trees that grew near the river and Aiedale watched them go, silent.
She had stood very still and quiet as the others had spoken. And now she felt a pang strike deep within her - of what she did not entirely know. Empathy, perhaps. Regret. Rare permission within this shared and undisguised grief for her to feel something herself. And then the anger flared again, anger at losing them and anger at knowing that she would keep on losing and keep on feeling this way.
She had relief on shields built endlessly and relentlessly each and every day, using the remoteness of her position to create a self-imposed solitude, distancing herself from all but a few. Knowing intimately that closeness was a weakness and it made one easy to be controlled, manipulated - actions stifled and power muted.
She thought back to her quiet revelation at the burial mound…you've changed, she thought, you just don't know how and it scares you. It scares you because it makes you vulnerable and yet you are beginning to wonder if it makes you human too.
When she was scared she got angry and it was that which made her stiffen her spine, made her eyes flash grimly and turn, without saying anything, to walk closer to the edge of the tree line and away from the other three. She scanned the ground, squinting in the fading light to see the story that might be written there. It was under a spreading chestnut tree whose brown, broad leaves from a former year were scattered upon the ground that she saw a faint foot print, a slight depression in the soft, dry soil between two twisted roots. It was so faint that she half wondered if she was just hoping that she saw it.
A broken leaf…
She studied it for a moment longer, heart racing and blood pounding in her head.
"Aragorn," she called over her shoulder, "come here."
The Ranger came quickly, leaving their other two companions to picket the horses. "What is it?"
"Look," said Aiedale, point with one finger at the print. "Is that…could that be…"
The Ranger stepped very carefully, his face a mask of total seriousness. He studied the print for a long moment and then moved forward, stepping into the shadow of the forest that stretched in front of them.
"I think it may be one of the hobbits," said the Ranger cautiously and Aiedale felt her breath catch, her body tensing at the confirmation. "But we cannot enter the forest at night."
Aiedale started, "Why not?"
"Because it is too dangerous," said the Ranger sternly, "even for one such as you."
"If they are out there…" She turned, half ready to ignore his warnings and her own sensibilities and go into the darkened shadows of the wood regardless.
"Aiedale," said the Ranger sharply, "you heard Lord Celeborn's warnings about the wrath of Fangorn." She glared at him, her anger boiling over but he gripped her arm tightly and said, "It is too dangerous even for you."
She cast one more glance into the trees and then said, voice pure ice, "Come morning I will go." She met his eyes, "With or without you, Legolas or Gimli."
"Why do you lie to me?"
Aiedale turned, aware that the conversation was taking a dangerous turn. "What?"
The faerie knight leaned back slightly, "You are lying."
She considered him for a moment, "Because you give me no option. If you could honestly give me your word that you wouldn't repeat everything I say or do to your Queen, then I wouldn't lie. If you would give your word that anything you see or hear in the time we spend together exists outside of your mandate then I wouldn't second guess every moment with you."
"The problem is," said the faerie, "nothing exists for you outside your mandate and it is a mandate that could very well kill me. Kill my people." The faerie knight leaned forward, "And I can't let that happen. I will not let that happen."
They were grouped close to a small bright blaze that Gimli had coaxed from some of the wood left by the Riders bonfire. The dwarf had been unamused by the constant warnings of 'no living wood' and had made a great show of gathering all the living wood that had become dead wood because of the Rider's decision to burn the carcasses.
They were silent for some time, the dark and unknown forest behind them was so near at hand and it made itself felt as a great brooding presence, full of secret purpose. Aiedale's eyes occasionally were drawn away from the bright flames and towards it. She found it difficult to look away, it was as if the forest was pulling her towards it, daring and challenging her.
"Celeborn," said Aragorn into the silence, "warned us not to go far into Fangorn. I see now why although I had always dismissed the stories as fables made by men as true knowledge fades."
"Even myths," said Aiedale quietly, "have a grain of truth in them."
Legolas touched a hand to the oak that they had chosen to camp under, "I have no stories or rumours of this place save only songs that tell how the Onodrim or the Ends came to dwell here long ago; for this wood is old, old even as the Elves would reckon it."
"Yes," agreed Aragorn, "it is as old as the forest by the Barrow-downs and it is far greater. Lord Elrond told me once that the two are akin, the last strongholds of the mighty woods of the Elder Days."
"The Barrow-downs?" asked the Shadowhunter. "Didn't Frodo and the others stop there for a time?"
"Yes," said the Ranger with a grimace, "and they nearly paid very dearly for their folly in disturbing it."
Aiedale was silent, thinking back to when she had first met the hobbits. That had been after their adventure on the Barrow-downs and she knew little of what had occurred there save what Sam had told her once in Rivendell when he showed her the knife he had taken from a burial mound. For some unknown reason, however, the mention of the place now gave her pause.
"They ran afoul of some ghosts, didn't they?"
"I am not clear about what happened," said the Ranger with a curious look her way, his brow furrowed in puzzlement. "I had only just come across their trail and I was more preoccupied with what was stalking their trail than whatever mischief they had found in the Barrow-downs."
Aiedale nodded, a sense of disquiet filling her. She thought back to the knives that the hobbits had retrieved from that particular adventure. They had been set with rubies with a double-edge and a single off set groove on each face of the blade. A khanjali type weapon she had thought at the time, more of a decorative piece than an actual weapon.
"Look," said the elf suddenly, "I think the tree is glad of the fire!"
Aiedale glanced up and all sense of disquiet at the mention of the Barrow-downs fled as she had the sudden urge to leap away from what had previously seemed a rather welcoming and ordinary tree. The boughs appeared to be bending toward their small group as if to come above the flames, while the upper branches were stooping down; the brown leaves which had once hung so limply were standing out stiff and rubbing together like many cold cracked hands taking comfort in the warmth.
"I think," said the Wood elf, "that there is some ancient sorrow in these trees." The elf rested a hand on the trunk, an unreadable look crossing his face.
They drew lots for the watches then and the first watch fell to Aiedale. The others lay down and she settled down, eyes scanning the shadows and trying, in vain, to make out what was lurking in the shadows of Fangorn. But she could see nothing even with her rune enhanced vision. She kept staring, however, unwilling to let her mind wander to other things…other more emotional things.
She had thought the others were asleep but, sometime after she had begun her watch, the Wood-elf stirred. Legolas's sky bright eyes fell briefly on the Shadowhunter and he followed her gaze towards the silent mass of forest.
"You are deep in thought," noted the elf, words whisper soft.
"I am thinking about my old seraph blade," she said at last, unwilling to speak of what else she had been thinking about and so drawing on something she had been puzzling over for weeks. "It did something very odd in Moria, something I have never seen or heard of."
Legolas watched her carefully, "What was that?" He was aware of how jealously she guarded her people's customs and weapons. But her voice was casual this time, she sounded as if she was engaged in an almost academic consideration of the event.
"It burned me," she continued in the same level, conversational tone. "It was as if the blade was on fire and not an ordinary fire nor even a fire created by a rune which can burn Shadowhunters. It is true that the louder you call the name of the blade the brighter it will glow - the stronger the Shadowhunter the more lethal the blade…but it wasn't that." The young woman shook her head, drawing a sharp breath and continued, "I actually think it hurt Durin's Bane which should be impossible, again, because one small seraph blade wouldn't hurt something that powerful…something that evil." She shook her head, breifly closing her eyes as she continued to think, "And even more interesting is my mother abandoning a blade with Lord Celeborn. Why would she do that? Shadowhunters never leave weapons behind and most definitely not seraph blades."
Legolas regarded the small campfire that had faded down to a few bright flames and some embers for a moment before asking, "What is special about them?"
"They are created out of adamas by the Iron Sisters," said Aiedale. She drew out her remaining seraph blade, regarding the silver-white, smooth and almost translucent blade with its neat runes. "It is the hardest substance known to my people. The blades are forged in the Adamant Citadel." She held out the blade hilt first to Legolas, "The same substance is used to make witchlights and steles. The Iron Sisters have been making seraph blades since the beginning of our order."
The elf stared at her and glanced at the blade being offered to him. "Can I?"
"Yes," said Aiedale calmly, "you can. Take it."
The elf took the blade, weighing it with expert hands. The blade was slightly warm, the smoothness almost unnatural. Yes, thought Legolas, it was a worthy blade but different and undeniably strange. He tested the weight, throwing it up in the air and then catching it with light fingered ease. He had handled knives for thousands of years but Legolas could not help think that this one, for all its grace and savage beauty, felt emotionless, and cold - a tool and nothing more. He passed it back, a little unnerved by it.
"We always keep used blades," said Aiedale, "they can be renewed if returned to the Iron Sisters. You never leave one behind willingly. It is considered a sign of disrespect to the Angel the blade is named for. I lost one when I fought the Balrog and I used one when I fought the Nazgul."
"A message? Some sort of sign?"
"Then it is a very expensive one," said Aiedale with a wry twist of her lips. "They say some blades are ill-fated. I wonder if this blade was to my mother."
"Ill-fated?" asked Legolas. "How so?"
"Perhaps it is the runes," said Aiedale, "or something that happens to the blade when the Shadowhunter goes to use it…but it has been said that some blades bring nothing but ill to their bearers. Some of them fail when they should not, leaving the warrior with no protection at all."
If it was one thing the elf knew all too well from centuries spent as a commander in Greenwood it was that all warriors developed, at some point or another, an odd superstition about their weapons. Maybe it was the colour of the fletching on an arrow or the way a hilt was wrapped, regardless it was the way of most warriors who risked life and limb. What Aiedale described sounded like some variant of that thinking.
The two fell into silence until Legolas asked, "In Rivendell you spoke once of your runes. You said they were a language."
"They are," said Aiedale once more surprising the elf with her sudden openness. "It is the language of Angels. We train for years to take our Marks. One must have the right intentions when they take a Mark, especially the ones that we carry for life."
"What is it like?"
She shrugged, "Once I would have said it was the greatest thrill and honour in the world. They are marks of of skill, of loyalty, of acceptance. But now…" she sighed, "The runes are a responsibility. I used to think I knew what it meant but I do not think…no I don't know now. I don't think I ever really knew. I memorized their meaning and I applied them, but I never understood."
At the elf's questioning glance she looked away. Should she explain? Legolas had always been a steady companion at her side, never doubting and never questioning her abilities except to ask how he could best assist her.
"I wonder," said Aiedale, "if I have been doing the right things for the wrong reasons. That I took my marks and used them but did not understand the meaning." She pulled her leather brace off and pushed up the sleeve of her gear to expose the open eye rune and the burn scar that the lines neatly cut through.
She had told the story of the burn to Aragorn long ago in that camp on the side of Carahdras when she had still been numb with cold from her near-death experience in the avalanche. Back then she had had an almost flippant attitude to the marks, had thought she knew…
"I should check on the horses," she said. The elf made no comment, not seeming to be surprised by her sudden desire to be alone.
But the horses were uneasy. They moved restlessly, pulling against their tethers and flicking their ears back and forth.
Aiedale glanced around but saw nothing. She returned to the campfire and found that Legolas had returned to his state of dreaming or living night or whatever it was and that Gimli was now awake, ready to take up the next watch. The dwarf was hunched by the fire which he had stoked up, running his thumb thoughtfully along ht edge of his ax. The tree rustled.
"I'd put that away," said the Shadowhunter as she made to lie down, a wry look crossing her face. "I don't think our tree companion for the night likes it."
The dwarf grunted but, very suddenly, his eyes went wide and he jumped up. Aiedale straightened, her body tensing and followed his gaze. There on the edge of the fire-light stood an old bent man, leaning on a staff, wrapped in a great cloak, his wide brimmed hat pulled down over his eyes. Aiedale went to move, went to open her mouth, as the thought that Saruman or one of his servants had caught up with them at last -
Legolas and Aragorn, roused by the sudden flurry of movement, sat up and also stared -
And then the old man was gone. So quickly and so silently that Aiedale wondered if her eyes had been tricked. There was no trace of him even when Aragorn searched the ground for tracks.
Suddenly, with a sharp whinny and the sounds of snapping tethers, the horses broke free. Aiedale's head spun to where their mounts had previously been but they were already gone. They had dragged their pickets and disappeared.
Aiedale's eyes turned once more to eaves of Fangorn and she felt a cold chill settle over her.
Time to set every distraction aside, time to rely on training ground in until she could not forget it…there was no time for anything else, no room for error or a lapse in judgement or conflicting loyalties. She sensed, as one senses the coming of a storm, that whatever awaited them in Fangorn would have vast and reverberating consequences.
Her hand tightened around the seraph blade left by her mother.
You have a choice now…
You must choose where you stand and where you die.
What if, she thought as her companions pondered their ill luck and the new dangers that faced them, I don't know anymore?