Her eyes traced the elegant drapes around the expansive windows, the coffered ceiling and the sophisticated colour palate of soft grey and cream. The Institutes were all impressive buildings, soaring rooms and endless hallways. The Paris Institute, however, took it to another level entirely. It boasted a truly excessive executive floor complete with offices and meeting rooms that were both elegant and austere all at once. It seemed to her, however, that the vast space often only emphasized how few Shadowhunters there were.
But, regardless of the number of active duty members or office space layout, all Institutes were filled to the rafters with cold, hard, ruthless ambition. It curled behind their facades like a viper about to strike.
Who cared? Sometimes it helped get the job done. She remembered all too clearly her aunt reminding her the previous evening of her responsibilities: "You're thinking about yourself, about your childish wants. As a Clave officer you have no preferences, no choices. You accomplish what you are told to do with excellence."
To hell with them.
As if she didn't know what was expected of her. She had honed within herself a cold hate and anger. It was the old kind of hate which was nurtured over time, honed and ingrained. It held you prisoner, she thought with only the tiniest twinge of regret. Whatever beast lived inside her, whatever the anger had twisted inside, it crouched at the entrance to the cave, talons gripping the dirt, ready to spring at anything.
As Aiedale walked through the bustling stone corridors, winding her way between civilians and their various provisions, she thought almost longing of her captaincy. Among the ranks of Nephilim she had risen far and fast, helped along by her family name and wealth as well as her own ambition and relentless drive to excel. She had commanded task forces and special warfare groups. She had been trained in espionage and infiltration, building her own networks and contacts not just in Paris but across Europe and other continents. While she was grateful not to be responsible as a commander for this lot of flotsam and jetsam, she did feel that twinge of old ambition, that question of: what would you do?
She had been taught never to settle, to concede an opportunity to build her own power base.
This was not her army nor should she hold any ambition to lead it, but Aiedale saw the opportunity which had been granted to her by the King of Rohan's desperation and his clear wariness of her. Her resolve had hardened since the loss of Aragorn.
If she was to make any difference, she had to try it now when the stones were still warmed by the sun and the shadows began to lengthen. In her mind she was already planning what she would draw, bringing to mind the runes which reinforced all Shadowhunter Institute's and safe houses. She had been lectured in the schematics of buildings, how to defend them, how to analyze their weak spots and reinforce them.
The Deeping Wall was twenty feet high, and so thick that four men could walk abreast along the top, sheltered by a parapet over which only a tall man could look. Here and there were clefts in the stone through which men could shoot. This battlement could be reached by a stair running down from a door in the outer court of the Hornburg; three flights of steps led also up on to the wall from the Deep behind; but in front it was smooth, and the great stones of it were set with such skill that no foothold could be found at their joints, and at the top they hung over like a sea-delved cliff.
Of course, Legolas was not far. He seemed to hover close to her, she thought with some amusement, both out of anxiety about what she might do and grief for the loss of one of their Company.
"Aiedale," said the elf warningly, "what will the King of Rohan—"
"I asked permission," she said to the elf. "Now leave me be. I don't want to be distracted."
The elf stepped back, a worried expression on his ageless face.
She lifted the stele considered the wall before her as she thought back to the Parisian Institute.
The Paris Institute was completely covered in runes. They were carved and etched into every surface, every door, every brick, every floorboard, every marble slab and richly carved sideboard. They were woven into every curtain, every carpet and every pristine table cloth. The old Institutes of Europe and Asia were full to the rafters with runes, layers upon layers that wove an intricate web of protection and defence. It was the work of generations of rune masters who had sought to counter every possible form of attack. They were maintained and added to by each Shadowhunter who resided at the Institute.
Aiedale remembered when she had first begun helping maintain the runes that protected the Paris Institute. She remembered how overwhelming it had been to suddenly realize just how many runes surrounded her, overlapping and interlacing. To realize how much power had been placed in protecting the Institute, the contained will power and determination that infused each rune placed there by her predecessors. Remembered that awestruck feeling as she added her own strength to the defences that protected the place she had come to call home and became part of that tradition, that wider unity which bound each and every Shadowhunter together across the generations.
There were runes specially set aside for the defence of a building. Runes that were intended to reinforce and ward off those who wished ill. But she wasn't strong enough to carve the really strong ones. Only the Silent Brothers and a few very talented rune masters could carve those. They took decades of practice to apply correctly and left their drawers drained.
Aiedale winced. She could almost hear the innumerable protests and objections her Nephilim colleagues would have if they could see her. How dare she use the runes to defend this loose pile of mundane stones! How dare she draw them in full sight of so many mundanes! How dare she-
She shouldn't do this.
But there was something here. Something disconcerting, a kind of offset familiarity that made her want to do this even if every Clave imposed rule and guideline told her not to. Thick stone walls and heavy doors recalled the fortress-like feeling of the oldest of the Institutes. The sounds of warriors talking about bows and the weight of a blade reverberating off armoury walls and stone floors, echoing about the basic, utilitarian furnishings of wood and stone. The hum of nervous, anticipatory tension…the scuffed walls and empty rooms speaking of under-manning and no time to prepare despite the best of intentions and the orders of steel eyed commanding officers whose white knuckles spoke of their desperation to somehow keep their men alive…all so familiar. All turned inside-out here, all so foreign, with Rohirrim green cloaks instead of black clothed Shadowhunters, plain spears instead of seraph blades.
The rune gleamed faintly as it took shape under her stele marked hands. She kept going, linking it to another and another across the inside of the parapets…
She was shadow. She was light—
The runes flowed from her. They whispered and called; they shone and burned as they took form. Their meanings known only to her. Only she knew the stories behind them — the stories of desperate survival and triumphant victory that she had memorized as a child, each rune different and unique with its own history that must be learned and respected. Each one powerful but, when united, it became part of a larger, cohesive pattern woven together by Shadowhunter resolve and Shadowhunter skill.
A power granted by blood —
But it was a power harnessed only by unrelenting resolve and focus —
She drew the last in a series of runes, inspecting her handiwork as she wiped her sweaty forehead with the back of her filthy gear. She had taken special care to reinforce the wide culvert that the Deeping-stream passed through. Her thoughts were hazy, her eyes burning with the white glow of the marks as they had taken form under her hands.
Her eyes travelled the walls of this fortress, saw another fortress. Saw the runes drawn there because of circumstances which had conspired to bring her to this foreign land, saw her own story of being forced to adapt and survive in this new world. She was exhausted, but aware of the elf standing close.
"It takes," she panted, "a lot out of one when you start drawing the more powerful runes…when you start the pattern making."
Hesitantly, as if afraid she might snap at him, Legolas wrapped an arm around her and guided her towards the inner keep. "You have done enough," he told her firmly, his voice holding the authority of the experienced troop commander well used to dealing with warriors who thought themselves invincible but were not. Legolas was a shrewd observer and an experienced leader in his own right. He knew that without his arm supporting her slight weight the Shadowhunter would have collapsed in full view of the wide-eyed Rohirrim, an event that would have done little to improve the mortals opinion of her.
"But…"
"Enough," said the elf calmly. "You won't be any good to anyone if you spend all your strength now, Aiedale." He glanced briefly at the pale-faced men hurrying around them, "And you will need all your strength."
She did not complain. She let the elf half-carry her away.
It was only when he had settled her in a corner of some sort of dusty store room with a plate of bread and cheese far away from the questioning and openly curious Rohirrim, that Aiedale found herself sinking into a deep net of self-disgust and self-loathing. She should not have used the runes in such a way. She should not have.
"I can't believe I did that," she whispered, staring down at the food.
Legolas with his keen hearing heard her and stepped closer. He took her in, took in the defensive slump to her shoulders, the wide eyed look of numb shock in her normally unreadable eyes. He had never seen her look so unsure…he had never seen her look terrified, as if she had suddenly had everything she once believed in pulled out from under her and it was so at odds with the capable, undaunted manner she had projected.
Aiedale put the plate to side, nausea rising within her. The runes were more than skin deep…what had she done rang over and over like a claxon in her racing thoughts, tumbling in a maelstrom. But every time she tried to wrap her mind around what she had done in the name of defending this place came rushing back in a blinding blow, leaving her dizzy, heart hurting. Maybe it was the mental toll it had taken on her or the sheer amount of stuff she had been through these past few months…her whole life, really. It all seemed to be crashing down on her like a wave that was pulling her down into a spiral of hate and loathing.
She closed her eyes, hand rising to her mouth, and the memory of her aunt's face long ago came to mind, solemn and serious as she took her first mark: To receive the Marks is the highest of all honours.
It took a moment for the significance of everything to sink in…another, for wider implications to follow, driven home by the memory of Inquisitor Herondale's face, still grey eyes aglow, a subtle spear of disappointment and demand colouring her voice: Do you feel nothing — no desire to uphold the faith placed in you by the Clave? We ask this of you because it must be done to save this world, without the Clave you are nothing — your actions inconsequential…yet you would bandy about the runes, the marks of your station? The marks Shadowhunters have fought for? Died for? Would spurn that honour — that Heavenly mandate — for what?
Aiedale was jerked back to the present moment by Legolas's hand on her shoulder. The elf had knelt beside her, his perceptive eyes searching her face with those eyes that seemed to penetrate all the way to her very soul. There were centuries of life in those eyes, deep as the hidden pools in the Fey Queen's kingdom. He slipped around so that he was sitting beside her, one arm wrapping firmly around her as if he could protect her from herself. For once she did not mind the physical contact, welcomed it when she would normally have shrugged it off, sought to distance herself from all the entanglements such a connection inevitably brought with it.
"What is wrong?" he asked gently.
She shook her head, not knowing how to put it into words.
But the elf was not deterred and he had guessed much. Her jagged edges had taken time to learn but he knew better how to read her now. Her still, pale face hid a tumult of emotions.
"You have not betrayed your people," he said quietly. "You told us that your mandate was to protect against evil. That is what you did today. It was what you did when you came with the Fellowship."
She stared at him and he saw the word running through her head, in the faintly panicked look to once shuttered eyes: Traitor.
The elf's grip around her shoulders tightened, "You are wrong, Aiedale. Your actions have saved lives—"
She looked into Legolas's deep blue eyes, wondered at the uncounted centuries of life the elf have lived. "This is not my war," she said. "These are not people I should concern myself with saving. That is what they would say…"
The world is on fire—
And you think all is forgiven?
"Who would say that?"
"The Clave," she whispered.
The elf's arm tightened around her shoulders and he said gently, "Maybe this is not what they intended for the runes, but I think you have ended up where you needed to be, Aiedale."
He was wrong. But he was also right. A Shadowhunter was always where the fight was, where death lingered like cold, dark spectre about to descend.
You could taste it, she thought. Blood and death.
Faint, yes. But you could taste it, if you knew.
Aiedale kept to herself after her display on the walls of Helms Deep. Curled up like a cat on some blankets in a store room set far back in the keep, she dozed, head pounding with a headache, wrapped tightly in her elvish cloak. There was little allowance for creature comforts in this echoing fortress, but the room Legolas had left her in was quiet and away from the civilians slowly making their way into the caverns carved deep into the mountains.
In her uneasy dreams she dreamt of darkness falling across the open plains of Rohan. A darkness that seethed with movement, huge and heavy, freezing the breath in her lungs and paralyzing her.
It would consume her—
She woke to raised voices, jarred from her doze into alertness. There was a different energy to the place, a whispering unease that permeated through the wood door.
Fastening her cloak around her and automatically checking her weapons, she left the room and made her way through the corridors of Helms Deep. Had the orc army been sighted? No, she decided. Men were not reaching for weapons or hustling the remaining civilians towards the caves. They were speaking with one another, odd looks on their faces.
She quickened her pace, moving with swift grace to the front of the keep. The closer she got to the entrance, the louder the whispers, the more wide eyed the looks.
And then she came to a halt, stopped. Staring in amazement and then…relief—
How in the Angel—
"Impossible," said the dwarf who had come to a stop beside her, drawn to the same place. "Absolutely impossible."
"Everything," said the Shdaowhunter automatically, "is possible, Gimli. The impossible just takes a little more time."
But in her head she was agreeing with the dwarf. It was a heady kind of relief she felt.
She stepped down the stairs towards the man who had just passed through the inner Keep gates and was now passing the reins of the bay stallion off to a wide-eyed soldier. The horse was covered in dried mud and sweat, somehow Aragorn must have recovered the horse.
"What took you so long?" she asked casually. Given her own return from the dead in Lothlorien she had no right to be angry with him. She was rather proud of him, in a way. It was a feat of survival even a Shadowhunter could be impressed by.
"There is an army coming," said the man.
"Good gracious," said Aiedale cooly, "we never would have guessed."
He didn't rise to the bait. "I must tell the King."
She swept her eyes over him and lifted an eyebrow, "Maybe change clothes then speak with him."
Aragorn waved an arm, dismissing her. The words not seeming to register as he swept by, the effect somewhat ruined by his definite limp and bruised face. His clothes were obviously still damp and he was splattered with mud. She sighed. The Shadowhunter supposed the King's tendency to view anything that came out of a man's mouth more favourably than out of a woman would help the King overlook Aragorn's personal appearance. Systemic sexism, she groused.
Her grouchiness was eased somewhat by watching Gimli and Legolas. Gimli was shaking the man, lecturing him for being a reckless lunatic, tears in his eyes. He had hugged the man around the middle so tight that the Ranger winced, one hand awkwardly patting the dwarf on the elf not seeming the least put off by the sorry state of the mundane and clearly relieved beyond words to pass the sword back to its rightful owner.
As the dwarf, elf and man walked deeper into the stone fortress, heads bent in discussion of whatever news Aragorn had brought, Aiedale stayed where she was. She was noting the wide eyes of all the Rohirrm. It made her smirk ever so slightly as the men turned to whisper to each other. From tamer of maddened stallions to survivor of warg ambushes, Aragorn was moving from strength to strength. There were few men more superstitious than soldiers — especially on the eve of a battle.
Now we just need to keep you alive. They need you, Ranger. Not just the Rohirrim, she thought as her mind went back to the proud Gondorian who she thought of even now.
Her eyes fixed on the back of the man walking with a distinct limp in front of her. He would probably not allow her to lock him safely in a storage room for the duration of the battle, but she was tempted.
Aiedale had washed herself off and was in the process of examining her weapons while her hair dried when Legolas stormed into her little storeroom hideaway. Aragorn had brought news of an army of orcs, hundreds strong, all of them bearing the white hand of the fallen wizard. The battle was on its way and she would be ready for it.
She let him fume for a moment before asking casually, "Did someone ask how you keep your hair so perfect?"
The elf didn't deign to respond to her, his mind clearly fixed on something else.
Someone had found him armour and he wore it with practiced ease, a round shield overlaid with gold and set with gems, green and red and white was slung over his back. She guessed Gimli would be in his short corslet of mail that had been forged beneath the Mountain in the North.
"Is this your first battle?" His voice was sharp.
"This is my second," said Aiedale patiently. "My first true battle was against Valentine and his demons."
She had never seen him like this. His once calm blue eyes flashed with furious fire, his steady hands were clenched around his bow. She read the anger in his narrow shoulders, in the subtle clench his jaw and the deep furrow between his eyebrows. The anger that radiated out from him was of a kind that made the normal methods of calming an angry warrior down that she knew seem pathetically ineffective. She felt like she was skating along the edge of a cliff just standing next to him.
"I think the odds are worse here," said the elf Prince darkly.
Aiedale glanced quickly at him and then away, not sure if meeting his gaze would only incite his anger more. "I don't know," she said carefully, "I actually think I have more hope of succeeding here than I did on the eve of that battle."
She turned her attention back to her quiver. She had four exploding arrows left and three flares. She would restrict herself to using only one of the exploding ones this night unless things got extremely desperate. She would surely be able to glean arrows from others during the fight, but she doubted she would be using her bow very much. It seemed more likely she would be fighting with her knives. Her hands worked without her having to think too much about it. It was second nature by now.
She paused, turning her attention to her blades and finding a noticeable nick in one blade. The balance was slightly off. At some point, probably in the chaos of Moria, this knife had been banged about a little too hard. Damn cave troll…
The warrior sighed inwardly. Her weapons were beginning to show tell tale signs of the months of heavy use they had gotten in Middle Earth. She would kill to have access to the Paris Institute armoury right then…or even better: the stock rooms in Alicante. A couple of the Silent Brother's more creative…well they would be appreciated right then no matter the opinions of these uninspired and unimaginative Middle Earth-ians. Ethics and honourable charges at the enemy shouting things about home and king weren't for those whose backs were literally pressed against a stone wall by a horde of orcs…
She glanced at the elf once more and said, "If you expect to lose then you will. People who start thinking deep dark thoughts in the middle of a war start expecting to lose."
She owed him for earlier, she thought. He had been there for her when she needed a reassuring hand to pull her away from the edge, to break through her spiralling self-hate and horror before it consumed her.
He sent her an unreadable look which she met with the corner of her eye.
"I don't think," she said, "you really believe this is hopeless."
She inspected another knife, fingers tracing the inscription on the smooth handle. It had been her father's and was inscribed with the motto of his family. Because of its sentimental value to her, Aiedale had used it sparingly.
"They are not soldiers," said the snappy elf, breaking her concentration again. His voice was hard with suppressed frustration and the bitter knowledge that came from past experience. "They will break ranks…this will be a slaughter."
And she understood, suddenly, where this rage, this despairing fury came from. He had been here before, she thought, with his back against a wall and someone telling him to find an impossible victory.
And if she looked at his rage like that, she thought, then his anger was all too bitterly, agonizingly familiar to a Shadowhunter who had served night after night on the streets of Paris and then stood at the front line as Valentine's demon army descended. Perhaps there was more in common between her and the elf than she had previously thought. And if that was true…then perhaps she could at least help him focus his rage on the orcs that were deserving of it instead of allowing him to self-destruct. How many times had an older warrior done that for her? He needed that assistance now. It was rare for Legolas to display such open emotion, that he did so now was a sign of how dismal the odds they faced were.
"Maybe," she said. "But perhaps not being soldiers is the very thing that will save them. They do not know what you know…they do not know how futile this fight may end up being and so they are stronger than you think they are."
She turned the blade slowly in her hands, testing the balance and weight, wanting to tell him that she understood but that did not change their responsibility to act. "We know what is coming, Legolas. Both of us know that this could very well end terribly for Rohan and for the whole of Middle Earth. But we also know that there is a chance…and that chance is what we must focus all our energy and strength on. They need us, Legolas, even though they do not want to ask for our help and scorn our advice."
She knew this all too well. All Shadowhunters did. It was the bitter truth of their fight, their sacrifice for the defence of Earth. No one cared. No one bothered to look. No one would thank them.
The elf's jaw clenched but he did not reply.
"You are angry," she said. "So am I," she continued, knowing that he heard the understanding in her voice. "I know that the you all think that I am always angry. And in some ways I am, but I am not angry at you. I am angry at other things. I've used my anger, my pain, my rage like I use a knife." She met his bright, observant eyes with all their swirling memories, "Let us turn our anger, our rage towards those who deserve it."
She wanted to say that somewhere, despite everything, she had tried to be forgiving on occasion and that the Fellowship had made her more forgiving, more tolerant. And yet, she knew, that there were times in her life, whole years, when anger got the better of her. Ugliness turned her inside out and there came a certain satisfaction in the bitterness of it. But she had learned that if she could not stop herself from feeling the cold fire of rage than she could turn it towards the demons, towards the things that deserved her rage and then it would not destroy the things she still cared about. But she did not know how to explain that to the elf without speaking of other, darker truths.
"The orcs show no mercy," said the elf, his jaw clenched.
"Well," said Aiedale with a small shrug as if it were the least important detail she had been informed of all day, "I know how to fight things that show no mercy. So do you."
"They are not just orcs," said Legolas, his voice snapping with brittle tension as if he had not heard her. "Those are Saurman's creatures—"
Aiedale waved a hand holding an arrow at him, "Please. Save it for someone who hasn't fought things with multiple heads dripping smoking poison from spiked fangs all the while trying not to breathe in noxious gas that it spits out from one of its many tails."
Legolas stared at her.
She smiled back, her smile razor thin. "Orcs," she informed him, "are stupid and mean. Those characteristics can form a formidable force — it is true — but it also makes them predictable and slow. Easy targets. These creatures are just a bit bigger and a bit stupider."
The elf frowned and looked ready to argue but there was something to her glittering eyes, some clench to that jaw which made him pause.
"What are they like? Demons?"
"Cruel," said Aiedale with no hesitation. "They show no mercy and so they receive none. Demons have nothing to give. They have no power of making. All their power is to darken and destroy."
"Like orcs then."
"Orcs," said Aiedale firmly, "have more compassion in them than any demon. And orcs usually have only one head."
The world was beautiful, and bright, and kindly, but that was not all it was. The world could be terrible, and dark, and cruel. Demons were the worst of that darkness, that cruelty which lurked in every act of unkindness and in every promise broken.
It would be bearable, thought Aiedale, if you didn't know that there was sometimes beauty and kindness and love. But because you knew there was such things as love or beauty or faith or hope, that sometimes the good did win and the missing came home…well it made things harder when you ran into the ugly or the cruel or the vengeful. The rollercoaster of it all wore on a person.
But it was the only life that was guaranteed. And because it was the only one she knew she had, she thought fiercely, it was her duty to live it, to serve as she had been taught.
"I'm not usually the inspiring type," said the Shadowhunter rising from her seated position, gently touching the elf's shoulder with a gloved hand. "Don't make me change my ways, Legolas."
"The risk—"
"Risk," said the Shadowhunter with only a hint of impatience, "means either 'shit happens' or 'good luck.' Not give up and die."
"That," came a low voice from behind them, "is something only you would say, Aiedale."
"Aragorn," said Aiedale easily, "I am glad you are beginning to learn some things about me. But you still do not think like a Shadowhunter. You still need me."
"And what," said the man with exaggerated curtesy, "are we going to accomplish with your guidance?"
"Victory," said the Shadowhunter with a toss of her dark auburn hair which she had unbraided and now cascaded in loose waves down her back. She was young, beautiful, and as sharp as a drawn seraph blade. She summoned all the biting, cold arrogance honed through the course of the Clave teachings and practiced during Clave meetings, daring them to contradict her. "For Shadowhunters will settle for nothing else."
There was something just so right about being back in the Institute after Alicante. The proportions of the corridors, the muffled sounds of Clave personnel, the clatter and bangs of daily life that went around the clock. Her room, smaller than the grand one in the Darklighter home in Alicante, cluttered with personal items and weapons, her little sanctuary.
But it was also uncomfortable, made her aware of how much she had changed and how much she needed to decide about who and what she was. It wasn't long before she found herself as she had many times before, sitting on one of the stone leader heads which protruded from the external walls at roof level. From ground level, they looked small and slim. But their scale matched the building, two feet wide and three feet long. The wind buffeted her, pulling at the thin wisps of hair that had escaped the regulation French twist, the occasional gust rocking her body. But she'd climbed out to and sat here for the last eight years, and had no particular fear of falling.
She was engaged in a dangerous, deadly game on so many levels. A game she should stop now. There was nothing to be gained, she thought. It would change nothing.
But maybe it would.
And it was that maybe she kept chasing. That need to do something or consign herself completely. For she could remember with painful, pinsharp precision the way she had felt herself closing down, turning off parts of herself, letting herself slip increment by increment.