A/N: Huge thank you to everyone who is reading so far! I hope you'll drop a comment or two to let me know your thoughts, especially after this wild ride! I've had such a good time writing this fic so far. Can't wait to keep bringing you more.

Chapter Ten - Rínior

Biting winds whipped around him. They'd marched for what felt like months. Rínior wasn't sure how long he'd been dragged along beside Aglarwain, hands tied and booted feet bleeding, but it could not have been that long. Or so he hoped. At least his captor was pleasant enough company. At least, more pleasant than orcs or the hill men with them.

Snow stretched on in all directions. There were no trees here. They'd left those behind in the Trollshaws. The last of them had faded in the distance after the Ettenmoors. Now it was just fields of snow and rocky outcroppings from the mountains.

The Mountains of Angmar filled all his vision now. He could see his own exhaustion mirrored in Aglarwain's face as they neared the foothills.

"Need a break, Aglarwain? Worry not, I promise not to slit your throat in your sleep," Rínior said, smiling.

Aglarwain gave a curt laugh. "You are no funnier now than you were two days ago, Rínior. That joke is as old as you are."

"You think this will wound me?"

"I have no need," he said. "I already have. Those scars all over your body are not from words after all."

Rínior chuckled. He trailed off into silence as they continued on. Each footfall ached. He tried to trance, to sleep on his feet as he knew the elves could. He longed to dream, to see the faces of his wife and daughter in blessed slumber. But he could not.

So he clung to the last dream he could remember not filled with torment and death: the woman with a red cloak and a Silmaril in her hand. It had to be a Silmaril. And it had to be his daughter. At least he had some light in this bleak, forsaken world.

With the rising sun, Rínior found himself stopped in his tracks. Rearing up at the end of the Mountains of Angmar stood a great castle of stone. Spires curled like sharpened, twisting spears towards the heavens. Great walls of black rock and iron created a many leveled fortress city. But it was the greenish black smoke issuing from unseen flames that caused a chill to creep up his spine.

"Welcome to Carn Dûm, Hero of the North," Aglarwain said, coming to stand next to him.

Their shoulders almost touched. Rínior had no words, no biting retort. For Aglarwain's tone was neither one of mockery nor hatred. He spoke firmly, not wavering but holding no love himself. And for a moment, Rínior felt he understood this man even more.

One did not need to love a thing to serve it. He had been serving Arthedain for five hundred years and held no love for it, not anymore.

"Come, the Witch-king awaits."

The march resumed. Storm clouds crept in from the Mountains of Angmar, blotting out the sun for much of the day. Snow began to fall as they drew closer. The barren land became dotted with settlements, small villages of thatched cottages and empty farm fields where few inhabitants showed their faces. The weather drove all inside.

Life abounded as they reached the outer gates. Rínior was flanked by hill-men, Aglarwain just ahead of him, but orcs and men alike skittered in and around the tall towers. Great black standards bearing the purple crown of the Witch-king flapped against the stone in the winter wind. He heard the howling of wolves and clanking of chains. Rínior held his head high.

He could not see much on the lower levels of the city beyond his captors' bodies. Languages he did not speak and faces he did not know filled his mind with chaos. It had been so long since he'd been permitted to rest. Rínior did not know how much farther he could go. But then, if the Witch-king did await him far above in some forsaken tower, the end of his road was near.

On the third level, his guards abandoned him. Only Aglarwain remained, holding the rope attached to Rínior's bound wrists. As he stepped beyond the gate arch, four men saluted him by pounding their fists over their chests. Rínior raised an eyebrow.

Then he looked closer. These men were taller, paler, with grey-blue or grey-brown eyes and darker hair. More men of Rhudaur?

He turned to Aglarwain. "How many of you remain?"

"Descendants of Arnor?" He smirked, urging Rínior onwards. "More than you would believe. But still, not enough. Otherwise I would be leading them into battle instead of men of the Hills. I see by the shock on your face that you did not think this possible?"

"Nay, I did not," he said.

"Most now serve the Witch-king here at Carn Dûm, in places of honor."

They passed onward. The Third Circle was much quieter than the others. No orcs roamed here, nor rowdy Hill-Men. He saw only tall soldiers in black, or robed priests and priestesses carrying staves without adornment.

At the center, they came to a painfully long, thirty foot wide stair straight to the citadel. Aglarwain ordered him to go ahead. Rínior felt the jab of his drawn sword at his back. A chill like that of the Barrow Downs crept down his spine as he marched ever upward, passing sickly glowing, carved faces with forked tongues.

This was it. This was to be the end. He kept his eyes forward to protect against what awaited him, but his mind wandered. Over fields of snow and under shining stars, he envisioned his wife dancing under flower branches in Rivendell, her brown hair adorned with blue blossoms and golden berries. He remembered his infant daughter in his arms, the picture of absolute perfection, grey eyes sparkling with mirth. He saw the shining Silmaril from his dreams under moonlight, washed by dark waves. That's what he wanted to remember in his final moments.

Massive iron doors swung open without a word. Gaping darkness stretched on beyond into the mountain. Rínior saw no guards, but he could feel them. An icy hand reached out and took hold of his heart, plunging his soul into freezing waters. He shook himself. No. No, he was not drowning. He was alive, for now.

"Walk," Aglarwain ordered, invisible in the darkness as the doors shut behind them. "History remembers names. Walk, Rínior."

So he walked. At the far end of the chamber he could just make out eyes of purple flames. Each footstep he took towards them felt like slogging through frozen mud. But he forged onwards, until he realized the eyes were not eyes at all. They were massive bonfires of cold, purple fire to either side of a distant throne.

Only when he came closer, expecting to be blasted with heat from the flames but feeling only colder as the life left him, did he see the real eyes of the Witch-king. Fell and deadly they gleamed, made of pale light and utterly soulless. Above them floated a crown of steel. He had no face, no frown. Rínior shivered.

But he did not look away. He stared deep into the Witch-king's eyes, felt as the painful creep of a thousand spiders under his skin filled his body. Waves of anger, despair, and ruin washed over him. He saw the destruction of Middle Earth in the void of his enemy's eyes.

But still, he did not look away. Rínior would never look away.

The Witch-king rose from his throne. By the purple light of the cold fires, his regal black robes glowed with a sickly hue. He reached forward with his right hand. The metal gauntlet grabbed his wrists, and Rínior felt a shock shoot up his arms. But his bindings fell to the floor.

Rínior gasped for breath. Still the sorcerer-king had yet to speak. Rínior wished he would get the execution over with. But when the Witch-king spoke, he cursed himself for not relishing the silence a moment longer. His voice commanded the room, and yet sounded little louder than a hissed whisper. Whether the breath came from the Witch-king's wraith-body or was the wind blowing through the halls of the citadel, he couldn't tell. But it turned Rínior's blood to ice.

"Do you fear death, heir of Fëanor?"

"No," he said.

"You lie." The Witch-king moved a step closer, his iron boot echoing in the hall. "I have seen it in your face."

Rínior tried to breathe, but it came more as a gasp than the long, slow breath he had wanted. "I have faced death nearly every day since I was born, centuries ago."

"Indeed. It is not your death you fear," said the Witch-king. "It is the death of that which you love."

Mírien flashed across face. He shut his eyes to see her more clearly. Her puffy cheeks as a baby, the way she had waddled about the halls of Fornost as a toddler, how he had last seen her learning to ride a horse in the citadel. Then he saw the woman with a circlet on her head, clutching a Silmaril amidst a tossing sea. Mírien as an adult, reclaiming the title they all deserved.

"Heir of Fëanor," the Witch-king said. "Your silence betrays you."

Rínior opened his eyes. He stared into the dreadful visage of the Witch-king, trying not to cower from the pale, gleaming eyes beneath his crown. "If you believe you know me so well, then you know I will do anything for my family. The House of Fëanor will never fail."

"That, young half-elf, is up to you." The Witch-king stepped backwards, returning to the throne. As he sat, his voice seem to grow to fill the hall even more. "I offer you a choice. Defeat, or Victory."

Aglarwain fell to one knee beside him. Rínior startled, having forgotten he was there. And for a moment, all he heard was the pounding of his own heart. He turned back to the Witch-king.

"I will impale you upon a spear, so that your screams may become my war horn and your body my battle standard. You will herald the doom of Arthedain as the first victim in my final assault, another doomed child of a dispossessed elven house."

Rínior could not look away. He tried, with all his might, for in the pale gleam of the Witch-king's eyes he beheld the fate of Celebrimbor before him, Sauron's limp plaything upon his own battle standard in the Second Age. Ice crept up his legs, freezing him in place.

"After you, I will begin with your wife. I will give her broken body to the Hill-Men to be their battle standard. And to the orcs, I will give your daughter. They will scream just as you. Their suffering will beat the battle drums of war for my armies. And only then will I let you die upon the spike."

He had seen this. In the Palantir. He had seen the armies of Angmar stretching on for miles unchecked. For years he had used that vision to fuel his bloodlust on the battlefield. With each skirmish he thinned their numbers. With each victory he hoped to chip away until their defeat. But he was one man, one half-elf surrounded by men who died as easily as the enemy. He could not win this. Not though he dedicated every hour of every day of every year for a hundred centuries. Rínior felt himself sway.

"Or kneel."

Rínior glanced down at Aglarwain, unbidden. And though the man kept his face down and pointed forward, his gaze wandered sideways, trying to meet Rínior's eyes. But he couldn't. Not while Rínior stood.

"I will give you Arthedain to rule as a vassal state, in the name of Angmar, Greatest of All Kingdoms. You will rule as your house always was meant to," he said, "last heir of Fëanor. To your daughter shall go all that you covet. In exchange only for the Palantiri of the North, I shall raise you above all others."

Rínior forced himself to breathe the dark, cold air around them. The vision of his daughter with a circlet and a Silmaril filled his mind again. He reached up for the star of Fëanor on his cloak clasp. But he found nothing. He wore no cloak, no emblem of his once proud house. He had not worn it since the battle. Fire filled him again, melting away the freezing fear in his veins.

"Neither you, nor those you love, need ever fear Death again."

Men called death a gift. But they were not men. They were half-elven, filled with the greatest strength of both kindreds, Eldar and Edain. His whole life he'd known he was meant for something more, something better. His daughter deserved better than to grow up amongst those who lived but a fraction of her lifetime.

And perhaps this was meant to be. He felt a tiny smile spread across his face. This was his dream, perhaps. The answer to everything. To his desire to see the House of Fëanor restored, to his endless life of battle and suffering. The Men of Arthedain had lost the war long ago. They clung to some distant fantasy as the line of Elendil withered away. If death was a gift, then perhaps it would be best that Rínior gave it to them swiftly. Mercifully.

He knelt. Aglarwain shot him another look, and their gazes met. He smirked, still bowing to the ground as before. He lowered his voice to barely above the sound of the wind in the cavern. "What does history remember, Rínior?"

"Names."