A/N: This chapter contains canonical character deaths and contains scenes of war
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Deific Flame
By Bejai
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"'Yes, yes,' said Gollum. `All dead, all rotten. Elves and Men and Orcs. The Dead Marshes. There was a great battle long ago, yes, so they told him when Sméagol was young, when I was young before the Precious came. It was a great battle. Tall Men with long swords, and terrible Elves, and Orcses shrieking. They fought on the plain for days and months at the Black Gates. But the Marshes have grown since then, swallowed up the graves; always creeping, creeping.'"

- The Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers

Chapter 11: The Plains of Dagorlad

At the High King's nonchalant pronouncement, Amdír glanced at Oropher, concerned about the sudden absence of expression on his old friend's face. Gil-galad had already moved on to another matter, but the King of Greenwood clearly had not. Come to it, neither had Amdír. "A moment, Ereinion," Amdír said mildly, just as Oropher laughed bitterly.

"He has given up, Amdír," Oropher interrupted, his voice dripping with strained derision. Greenwood's king stood abruptly and turned to Elendil. "He has given up, king of men, before we have even begun. Keep that in mind when you follow him into this fight: the 'High King' of the elves does not believe we can win. Can you afford that?" he asked, and, laughing humorlessly, exited the tent.

Amdír sighed, and stood. "This may not have been wise, Gil-galad," he said, and followed his old friend out, leaving a stunned silence behind him.

Oropher was standing several paces away, gleaming angrily in the starlight as he brooded over the twinkling fires of their vast host, his hand resting on his sword as he took sharp breaths of the cold night air. Amdír knew that the great beech-tree emblem of Greenwood was worked into its hilt, but his eyes were drawn to the brand on his shoulder--the same emblem drawn into his own armor, and on Celeborn's. A winged moon, silver on black, in memory of their King.

"Ai, Malgalad," Oropher sighed, using Amdír's childhood name as his friend came to stand beside him.

"I was afraid of this, when he did not arrive with the rest of the counsel," Amdír admitted quietly. "But can you think of anyone more qualified?"

Oropher snorted faintly. "More qualified? No. Maddening as Telpë is, there are few 'more qualified' than he to do anything. Including command an army," he said pointedly.

Amdír paused, and digested the underlying hurt. He felt it as well: Elu's greatest general was not here, and it felt like an insult. But he knew better. "Look at this host," he mused after a moment. "Look at it; I have not seen such a thing since the elder days. It is magnificent. But it must eat. It must be re-supplied, armed, and watched from behind. Celeborn has more ties with all the realms of Middle-earth, including the world of men, than any of us. He will be able to coordinate all that this mighty force will need in the coming years. You and I must keep our people alive in the moments of battle. But someone must keep us all alive through the grinding days. If I were Gil-galad, perhaps I would have made the same choice."

Oropher frowned through lines of grief. "There is truth in what you say, my friend," he said. "But there are many who would have been perfectly capable of coordinating all that must be done behind our lines." He gave a grudging, twisted smile. "Galadriel comes to mind, for example. But think on this: who has stood most often with between Sauron and a doomed city? Who has presided over the most desperate evacuations? Who among us as succored more refugees as they flee terror and death?"

Amdír closed his eyes. The same unpleasant thought had already occurred to him. "Gil-galad knows that among us all, Celeborn is the most qualified to stand against the darkness long enough for our people to escape to Valinor, and so holds him back to hedge our defeat," Amdír summarized heavily. "Yet there is some prudence in that," he continued quietly.

"Only if escape to Valinor is an acceptable option," Oropher cried in despair. "But who among your people would go? Who among mine? I have brought my army here, my brave, doomed army, because defeat in this war cannot be an option. There are many of us who will not heed Mandos's call even in death; why would we choose Valinor to save our lives? Yet with his 'prudence,' Gil-galad reveals that he does not believe we can win this war, and then, as if to seal our fates, holds back one of our most powerful assets."

Amdír nodded, and listened to the sad songs echoing from the city of tents spread before them, for many knew that this was their last night in life. "Celeborn would not have agreed to this unless he thought it wise," he said quietly.

"I know," Oropher answered, "and that worries me deeply."

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Celeborn frowned and leaned back in his chair as he rifled through the stack of parchment.

He shook his head and looked up at the rows of books in Elrond's study that, for all their sentinel-like solemnity, would not provide an answer other than the conclusion he had already reached. 'Elrond's study' he still called it in his mind, although it had been his these last three years in which he had been the interim lord of Imladris--and, it seemed, the steward of all of Middle-earth while its lords were off to war. And the guardian of other things, he thought heavily, glancing down at the floor.

A strongbox was hidden under the boards, placed there before the Army of the Alliance marched for Mordor and war. Celeborn had joined Gil-galad, Círdan, and Elrond in the last minutes before they departed.

"All is prepared here," Elrond had said somberly, his heart as heavy in handing Imladris to Celeborn's care as Celeborn's was in taking it. "Isildur has asked that his wife be permitted to stay here. She is midway through her pregnancy; the child will be Isildur's fourth son …"

"Isildur has already spoken to me. I will watch over them," Celeborn said kindly. All of the sons and grandsons of Elendil were going to war, and he knew that Elrond worried that the child, hidden in Rivendell, might be the last of his brother's heirs. Celeborn carefully shielded his own foreboding--that if Elrond died also, the child would also be the last of the blood of Elu Thingol.

"There is one more matter before we go," Gil-galad said, glancing at Círdan and Elrond, who nodded and each placed a ring on the table. Celeborn inhaled sharply.

"No," he said, folding his arms.

"Hear me," Gil-galad said, raising a placating hand. "Vilya is Elrond's, as ever. Narya I have given to Círdan. But we agree that taking them into the jaws of Mordor is folly. We will leave them here, merely under your protection." The king paused, his face darkening at the flat rebellion in Celeborn's eyes. "You are not their bearer," he continued tightly.

"My protection? Celeborn challenged. "How do you know I will not destroy them instead?" he continued, coolly tempting the rage that briefly flared in the ringbearers' eyes.

"That is part of the reason we have put them in your care, rather than Galadriel's," the king said fiercely. "If this war goes badly, as I suspect it might, if we are defeated and overthrown, you are to destroy them by any means." He smiled faintly. "As they seem to have no hold over you, among all Elves, you might find the strength to unmake them."

Celeborn turned away, facing the sunlight that streamed through the window. "No hold over me?" he asked softly. "Say rather that I am helplessly at their mercy, and you will have the right of it. You ask much," he said over his shoulder, straightening in decision. "Too much. I will not do this."

The High King looked at Elrond and Círdan, dismissing them with a jerk of his chin. They shared a rueful shrug and exited quietly.

"By the Valar, Celeborn," Gil-galad said, building into a boiling rage. "Would you rather that we carry them straight into Mordor?"

"You know my opinion about what should be done with them; what should have been done with them," Celeborn replied, turning fluidly to face the king.

Gil-galad gave and incredulous laugh and a shake of his head, and stepped nearer. "As Elbereth is my witness," he said, low and dangerous, "if you will not do this in my name, despite your oaths, despite our alliance, despite our friendship, then I will summon Elendil, and by the blood of Elu Thingol that runs in his veins, you will do this."

Celeborn frowned. "Why did you give Narya to Círdan?" he asked quietly.

Nonplussed, Gil-galad stepped back. "Because I know I will not survive this war," he confessed.

Celeborn nodded, "Galadriel tells me that there are only two ways this will end, my friend," he said. "In utter defeat, or in . . . something less than victory."

"I feel that as well," Ereinion admitted heavily.

"The Elves have ended every war we have ever fought in something less than victory," the silver lord said conversationally, staring at the gleaming rings perched innocuously on the table. "We would not be here, fighting his battle again, if that were not so." He raised his eyes to the king's. "And yet, we are still here."

"Perhaps. But you've changed the subject," Gil-galad said ruefully.

Celeborn turned back to the window. "I will do what you ask, and in your name. Be well, Ereinion Gil-galad. I do not want to lose another of our great kings to the long defeat."

Ereinion had no response.

Elrond and Círdan had returned a few minutes later, each of them placing a ring in an intricately-locking strongbox before carefully concealing it in the floor. As they did so, Celeborn stood mute and immobile, his hands folded behind him as he faced the view out the window.

"Farewell," Gil-galad said quietly to his back.

Celeborn watched as the men and elves of the Last Alliance marched somberly out Imladris. His small force, the elves who would remain to guard the army's supplies and all the roads and lands of Middle earth, lifted their crystalline voices in a lament of parting. Rivendell's guardian did not join them, but he did not turn away until the High King paused for his last view of the hidden valley.

A gentle footstep outside the library eased Celeborn from the memory of that day, three years before. He blinked at the papers strewn on the table, and lifted his gaze. "Lady," he said, standing as Isildur's wife entered the room.

"Pardon me, my lord," she said, hesitating on the threshold. "I did not mean to intrude. I was merely wandering the halls, searching for sleep."

"You'll find none in here," he answered with a soft laugh. "But even so, will you sit?" he asked, tilting his hand. He lifted a very bottle of old wine in query, and she nodded gratefully as she eased into a chair. "Valandil is asleep, I assume?"

"Yes," she said with a smile. "We had a big day. We learned that all kinds of interesting creatures live under logs and rocks, and so have lifted every one in Imladris."

Celeborn chuckled. "An important discovery, and hard work for a little boy," he said. "For his mother too, I would imagine."

She smiled ruefully and sipped her wine. "Messages from the front?" she asked after a moment, indicating the parchments.

"From the front, from the rear, and everywhere between, it seems," the Elf answered. "No word from Isildur," he said, answering her unspoken question. She regretted that she had changed the subject, as the joy brought from her child's antics slipped from his eyes and was replaced by battle-worn concern.

"I remember feeling like your son," he said introspectively. "In my youth, the world seemed wild and endless. If evil follow us, we left it behind and started anew." He shook his head, as if in wonder at his own naïveté.

"Go on," the lady encouraged gently. She had found it was a rare thing for an Elf to expose his deeper thoughts to a mortal; rarer still for the Lord to say anything about himself. She thought of Galadriel, of whom she had always been more than a little frightened, and wondered, with a kind of awe, if he missed her as much as she missed Isildur. Then she considered how many -- centuries? millennia? -- they had been wed, and admitted that he might miss Galadriel more than she could comprehend.

"Love is love, lady," he said, and she blushed, embarrassed that he had followed her thoughts so easily. He glanced away. "Of late, the world seems smaller, for there is nowhere to run," he continued, as much to give her a moment as anything. "And larger, for I find that I feel responsible for all of it."

He frowned and began shuffling through the papers on the table. The lady smiled sadly and stood to go, sensing that his candid mood had passed. But as she stepped over the threshold, he spoke again, and she paused, one hand on the door.

"And yet in the midst of it," he said, his voice low and grieved, "I am beset by a kind of impotence. I am told, by a reasonably reliable source, that the time of the elves is drawing to its twilight. I find that the more I sit here, staring at these parchments, the more I believe her. I can feel Mordor oozing around its edges, slithering through our cities and through my patrols. We are being cut off, and although I know what must be done to stop it, I can do nothing but beg others to act--knowing well that it might kill them.
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"I would not be here telling you this unless it were true," Calandil snapped testily. He knew that the lords of the war counsel, here at the front lines, had difficulties of their own to contend with. He knew that Sauron rained fire and death down on them at regular intervals; he had seen enough of the seriously wounded shipped back to Imladris to doubt that. But although the armies of darkness and light had skirmished for three years, Gil-galad had not pushed, instead carefully gathering his forces while evil haunted the free realms Middle-earth. The time for caution had clearly passed, Calandil thought. If they would not heed him, the army would soon find itself fighting a genuine war on two fronts, cut off utterly from their support, and with nothing left to fight for.

"That is where we stand, my lord King," he continued. "Arguing with me will not change what is. Even Celeborn cannot hold all of Middle-earth, not with Mordor spilling out around your flanks and into the kingdoms you are supposed to be defending."

Gil-galad had turned away during the captain's outburst, pacing in front of the great map spread out on three tables at the back of the tent. "How long do we have?" he asked, resigned.

"Weeks," Calandil answered succinctly, shifting slightly on his feet, the relief evident in his eyes. "Our difficulty is not the orcs that have slipped through Mordor's cracks, but the men and dwarves, for we cannot discern whether they are friend or foe until they are nearly upon us. Worse, their attention is no longer focused directly on the supply trains, but the cities themselves. In that last month, we have repelled two major assaults on Imladris itself. Galadriel has reported several skirmishes at the borders of Mithlond; Celebrían is contending with raiders at Edhellond; Greenwood was attacked last week; Lothlorien the week before … you are being flanked, my lords, and we are going to disintegrate behind you."

"What does Celeborn suggest?" Gil-galad asked, faintly ironic.

"Attack," Oropher muttered savagely from across the room.
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Standing on a slight hill at the edge of the plain, Gil-galad closed his eyes in agony. Some of his captains and soldiers standing near him looked desperately at their king, begging him to give the order to charge. Some were stirring mutinously.

"Hold," he commanded loudly, lifting his hand. "Hold! Or all is lost!"

Grim faced, Elendil came to stand beside him. "In Varda's name," the king of men whispered.
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If Amdír's arms had not already been moving, slicing viciously upward, it would have been he who was decapitated. As it was, he stumbled and fell to his knees beside the orc's head a few seconds later, his sword slipping from his numb fingers. He weakly batted aside the grotesque thing, choking on the blood that abruptly welled in his throat. It was an acid counterpoint to this rotting swamp where Lorien's forces had inadvertently been pulled into battle. This ooze would not have been the ground that he would have chosen for the offensive, but then, this was not where they were supposed to be.

Gil-galad had placed the faithful little army of Lothlorien to the extreme right on the dusty plain of Dagorlad, Oropher's Greenwood to their immediate left. After years of near inaction, this offensive was to be bold, decisive. They were to sweep into Sauron's forces with wrath and surprise. They had been placed, they had been ready, and then--they had waited.

The king rolled his shoulders, trying to ignore the sweat dripping under his armor, and had just settled into a familiar state of numb mindlessness that had marked many of the campaigns over the course of his long life, when Amroth suddenly shouted hoarsely: "Ai, Elbereth Gilthoniel! What is he doing?"

"Oropher!" Amdír roared futilely, curing himself as the King of Greenwood rushed forward at the head of his warriors, though Gil-galad had not given the signal for the advance. He should have seen it coming. "Wait!" he cried as his own force surged around him, but he could not prevent his fiercely eager troop from sweeping onto the plain with the army of Greenwood, and raged with helpless horror his army was cut off from the main host and driven mercilessly into the deadly marsh.

Kneeling helplessly on the ground, he lifted his head, hoping to see Gil-galad rushing to save his Silvan comrades, but the High King's starry banners never moved from the edge of the plain. He felt the mud, thick with elven and orcish blood, entombing his calves and hands as he sagged forward, desperately trying to breathe as the battle swiftly died around him. His warriors, his people were falling around him, more each second, and he heard the orcs laughing maniacally at the slaughter. He looked up, toward the towering mountains of Mordor, and despaired.

"Amroth," he groaned, struggling to crawl to where the child of his heart lay face down in the muck, struck through with an arrow. Still yards short, his strength failed, and he collapsed forward with a choked cry, his body sinking as his soul snapped and drifted. Amdír was skeptically considering Mandos' offer when he saw Amroth twitch desperately and claw at the earth, pulling himself forward until his face hit a clump of dry weeds a few inches higher than the sludge.

"Nimrodel," the boy gasped.

Good, Amdír thought, and, making his decision, he knew no more.
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continuing …
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Next chapter: Victory, of a sort.