AU Fourth Age fusion of book and movie-verse. Set ninety eight years into Aragorn’s reign.

A:L:G  OC  Friendship fic. Not slash. PG for violence and some adult dilemmas in later chapters.

Angst/Adventure

Previously posted as Unbinding the Box

Adagio

Chapter Four

Early Spring

Aragorn looked at the sad collection of objects laid out on the table in front of him and felt his heart sink. Whatever the true story, something was indisputably amiss.

Legolas leaned over and picked up the leather gauntlet with its sliced palm and took it nearer the window to examine it in the light.

Aragorn surveyed the blood marred, embroidered bodice, that still had the remains of cut laces caught in the eyelets, and then touched a finger to the crusted dagger.

"These are Gleowyn's?" He asked Bardor, who looked red eyed and as gaunt as a man of his size could. Aragorn doubted that he had slept in the last week.

Bardor nodded and held out a last object, tied with a thin silk ribbon. "Her hair, Sire. Even that was mired and blooded."

His composure suddenly fled and he had to look away, struggling to hold back a sob.

"She fought hard, my girl."

Aragorn felt enormous sympathy for the man.

The young man who had accompanied the Master Smith, Frecern, Aragorn remembered, Gleowyn's fiancé, took his master's elbow and guided him into a nearby chair. Bardor sank his face in his hands.

Angrily Frecern strode back to the table, leaned his hands on it, and glared at Aragorn, who had been glared at by experts so remained unmoved.

"It's his, isn't it?" Frecern spat the question in the direction of Legolas.

The Elf exchanged a confirming glance with his king, but ignored the youth's outburst, returning the glove to the table and then moving back beside Aragorn without speaking.

Frecern had followed the exchange, and seemed to swell with self-righteous rage.

"I demand justice and weregild from that murdering dwarf's kin."

He got no further with his demands, finding himself suddenly at the sharp end of Legolas' furious gaze. Aragorn snapped a hand up automatically to bar Legolas from charging over to make murder a fact, not a surmise.

"Frecern. " He said with some restraint. "By your and your Master's testimony none know what happened, and both parties are missing."

Legolas bowed slightly to Aragorn and stepped back again, but his eyes did not leave the dark haired smith, who found himself shifting nervously, as if targeted.

Aragorn continued. "I would also remind you that the Lord of Aglarond is named Elf-friend and held in high esteem at this court. So respect will be shown to his name until it is proved he has forfeited his right to it."

The swarthy smith backed away and bowed, but Aragorn thought he was not repentant.

Aragorn looked over to Bardor again. "You are sure there are no witnesses to be found?"

"Only the goat herd, as I said, Sire."

 Bardor rested his head back in the chair, wearily.

"And the lad is simple. We could get no more out of him than that he had seen a dwarf following the pretty lady up Dunharrow cliff."

"And the dwarves have had no word?"

"So say they." Sneered Frecern, irrepressibly.

"Aye, and so they say to me also." Stated Aragorn in a quelling voice.

 He was fast losing patience with Gleowyn's intended.

Legolas moved to study the great map of Gondor that hung on the wall of the chamber, tracing the various marked roads and tracks that ran in and out of Harrowdale. Not marked, but large in his memory, was the other path the missing pair could have taken, under the Dwimorburg, leading at last to the Morthond Vale.

He did not believe it was a path Gimli would have taken by choice. The Elf could not remember any other time Gimli had been so discomforted as when he had followed the Grey company through the Paths of the Dead. It was not something ever discussed between them, but it was so.

Behind him Aragorn was ushering the two men out of the room with a promise of practical aid in the morning. Then the king came back and looked at the map, placing a careful hand on Legolas' upper arm.

"We'll go ourselves, my friend, and find them and some long tale, I am sure."

Legolas glanced at Aragorn, and thought he looked worried.

Arranging an escort, delegating his royal duties and discussing the endless details of government with Eldarion and Cirion, took all of the rest of Aragorn's day and occupied him far into the night. It was very late when he finally reached his bedchamber and the welcome sight of Arwen, propped against a sea of pillows embroidering while she waited for him.

Aragorn undid his sword belt and, glancing at his queen with ill concealed smugness, hung it up on the stand provided. Arwen's lips tilted up and she followed his progress with her eyes as he walked over to the chair where he sat and tugged off his boots.

"I am sorry," His voice became a little muffled as his shirt followed his waistcoat over his head.

 "I missed supper, and I wanted to talk to Tolman."

Aragorn, once again making eye contact, separated his waistcoat from his shirt and draped both garments neatly over the back of the chair.

Arwen's smile developed a dimple. She put her embroidery down on the side table and frankly watched as his trousers descended, were removed and placed neatly on the seat of the chair.

He looked coyly over his shoulder at her because she was openly laughing at him now, and whipped a towel around his hips before stalking into the adjacent bathing room.

He regally ignored her disappointed pout.

"And did Tolman tell you of his plans?"

Aragorn raised his voice a little to be heard through the open doorway, Arwen appeared in it, then glided over to deal with his back and hair.

"He and Legolas bored the whole table with an endless discussion of, " she frowned a little and Aragorn ran a wet finger across the bridge of her nose to smooth the lines.

 "Ah that's it; 'plant variants and species'."

She flicked water at him and then escaped back to the bedroom as he surged out of the water after her.

Another towel was thrown in from the doorway and Aragorn caught it, then climbed right out of the bath and started to dry himself.

"The two of them distracted themselves sufficiently then?"

"For a while, Tolman is planning some collecting trip after visiting the library."

Arwen replied, climbing back into bed after blowing out the candles and then joyfully opening her arms to her husband as he climbed in after her, a little damply.

Some time later, Aragorn, snuggled into his wife's accommodating curves, asked sleepily.

"Do you know about Legolas and Minuial's relationship?"

"What about it?"

Aragorn sighed, he should have figured.

"I didn't."

Arwen snorted with laughter.

"You have walked over the whole of Middle-earth with him, and known him for most of your life, and you didn't know. What do men talk about?"

Aragorn was too tired to tell her, he didn't know anyway.

Three weeks earlier

Ghazari-buri-Ghai was secretly ashamed of his womb brother Ghodsi.

The Wose, his people, were the mountain's children, and like the mountains should be perfect, strong and enduring. Ghazari's own strength and courage had provided him with a necklace of Warg fangs, and the respect of his chief, Ghunkor-buri-Ghan.

Ghunkor was a mighty hunter himself, of course, and had four wives to prove it, but when the Chief had held this latest dead infant to his heart, and joined the women's stricken ululation to the spirits of Irensaga, it was to Ghodsi, not Ghazari, that the tribe had turned to for help.

Ghodsi the special, Ghodsi the deformed, with his withered arm and twisted leg, Ghodsi the shaman and prophet.

Ghazari had to give mana to his brother.

He had risen, or in his case fallen, to the occasion without hesitation.

Letting the spirit catch him he fell down writhing in one of his bucking, frothing fits, and intoned in the hollow tongue of the mountains:

"Near the abandoned temple of your fathers seek for the broken maiden. Healing follows."

 Before finally going slack and falling asleep.

A collective shudder had run through the assembled families, echoing the chill standing the short hairs up on his neck. It was never comfortable when the spirits touched mortal lives.

Now Ghazari watched his lame brother as he peered through the sheltering firs at the base of the Dwimorburg, and wondered afresh how he had known that the tunnels, closed to them for generations almost without number, had been cleansed of old evil.

He asked him, but Ghodsi just looked at him with his black, manic eyes and gestured at the first stars appearing over Starkhorn.

Ghazari shared a look with his trail brothers, who had all lost most of their awe of Ghodsi during this long trip. He had contributed very little, his prophetic powers did not stretch to telling them where to hunt most successfully and he ate what seemed his weight in meat despite his skinny frame.

Ghazari shrugged, then gestured in a circle and at the trees and watched as the band melted from sight.

Ghazari stood behind a fir tree and watched Ghodsi poking at the orange fungi that grew on the south side of the trunks.

Finally Ghodsi stiffened like a dog on a scent, and even Ghazari felt a difference in the forest.

He darted forward and pulled Ghodsi into concealment, giving the grinning shaman the sort of no-nonsense look that even Ghodsi respected from their shared childhood. Then Ghazari scouted ahead, and, to his again secret chagrin, found the sobbing woman they had been sent for, exactly where Ghodsi had said she would be.

 00000

Tears, Gimli thought, were harder to endure than any of the battles he had fought over the last hundred or so years.

"Nay lass, lass, he's not worth such grief." He patted Gleowyn's anguished back and waited with all the patience of a weathered stone for the storm to pass.

The day slid from twilight to velvet black, Earendil shone over Starkhorn's head like a jewel in a crown, and eventually Gleowyn found herself again and began to regain control.

"There, now that's more the thing, lass."

Gimli fished in the pack he had manoeuvred down beside him and handed her a clean square of linen.

Gleowyn managed a watery twitch of her lips and accepted the cloth gratefully. If nothing else it gave her something to hide behind.

She sat up and Gimli stood to stretch out his kinks and give her a little space.

He eyed the cliff edge and the crumpled girl. The evening had brought with it a bitter wind out of the valley and if he felt it, Gleowyn would be getting chilled.

"Come child," Gimli shouldered his pack again and stood in front of the woman.

"Let us seek some place more sheltered."

Gleowyn suffered his helping hand, then wrapped her arms around her middle and stood bowed like a willow, but when he moved off she followed him meekly up the meadow alongside the standing stones letting the wind push her along.

She felt hollowed out and quite unable to make any decisions for herself, letting someone else take over was the purest luxury.

hey made their way into the shelter of the first dark trees and the wind was cut off, leaving them in the eerie sighing presence of the wood and the standing stones.

Gimli finally stopped prowling around his chosen campsite and fell to gathering enough dead wood to start and maintain a small fire. He still felt uneasy, but shrugged it off, these woods had even repelled Legolas the last time they had passed. It was not surprising he felt twitchy.

He settled to watching Gleowyn as she prepared them a meal from the supplies he had carried. She had begged for a task in a weak voice, most unlike her usual confident tones, and Gimli, after a startled pause, had seen the wisdom in busyness and gone instead to fetch water for them both from the rill they had camped beside.

Gleowyn's blood stained chemise looked both flimsy and grim in the firelight.

Gimli could see gooseflesh on her upper arms despite her proximity to the fire, so he bethought himself, then dug in his pack for the third time and finally pulled out the small package that was his tightly wrapped elven cloak. He shook it out doubtfully then struck with inspiration turned it sideways, and offered it to her mutely.

Gleowyn paused in her tormenting of the sizzling sausages, glanced down at her state of bedraggled dress, and gratefully wrapped the material about her shoulders, fixing it out of the way with its own beautiful leaf clasp.

She opened her mouth to thank him for his unending kindness but her gratitude caught on her raw nerves, and instead she dissolved once again into a flood of wracking sobs.

Gimli rescued their dinner from drowning without comment, and she stumbled over to the standing stone and sat with her back to it, struggling for control, huddled in the surprising warmth of his cloak.

She found she could not eat; the food seemed like so much ash in her mouth so she ended up offering most of her meal back to Gimli.

He accepted and swapped her a large tin cup full of hot tea spiked with some added spirit he had poured in from a silver flask he had excavated from his seemingly bottomless pack.

The tea was as welcome as the sun in the morning; she cradled it between her hands and sipped, enjoying the pure animal comfort.

Gimli had taken off his helmet and topcoat and was working around the fire in his shirtsleeves and waistcoat.

Gleowyn thought how efficient and graceful he was, despite his short stature and differences from her own kind. She was watching how the firelight played with the sliver and red in the intricate braid that ran down his beard, when it seemed suddenly as if a stick had grown in his chest.

She frowned, not understanding, then gasped as another arrow took the dwarf in the left shoulder, spun him around away from the fire and dropped him just as a third arrow missed its target and ended up quivering in the grass between them.

"No." She scrambled to her feet. "Gimli."

Then the little clearing was full of the wild men she had only heard of in nursery tales, arrows nocked, squat and alien to her eyes the image of the statues she had used as props earlier in the day as she scrambled up the cliff path. They were dressed barbarically in layered animal skins and grass and their faces were painted with blue and black dye, causing them to look even less human.

She screamed, pushed this day past any reasonable limit, and tried to run to Gimli, but the warriors caught at her arms and waist, and easily overpowered her.

They bound her with jute ropes despite her desperate struggles, and so quickly it seemed impossible, they had trussed her like a deer; and like a hunting kill she was carried out of the clearing between two Wose warriors.

Gimli lay in helpless rage; the paralysing poison on the arrows meant it was purest luck that his head was turned in the direction of the warrior's retreat.

He saw the band trot off down the stone lined pathway that lead to the Dimholt and the forbidden door, with Gleowyn still twisting and shouting despite being bound, and then the poison overcame even his sturdy senses; and all went dark.

If the third arrow had found its mark that would have been the end for the Lord of Aglarond, Elf-friend and hero of the fellowship; but dwarves are hardy folk, much hardier than most would credit, and even though his system could not throw off the effects of the poison quite as quickly as it would have in his youth, still he had a burning will to wake.

Even as he struggled to breathe throughout the long night, part of him fought against the velvet lure of peace and ease, and as the dawn broke night's dominion over the sky, Gimli woke.

He found in that grey light that by degrees he could get his fingers to work.

Slowly and with great pain he inched a hand up to his chest to where the first arrow was lodged. With an effort but deliberately no thought, he plucked the slender shaft out. Darkness descended again.

Only a little while later, the sun had yet to rise high enough to clear Starkhorn's knees, he dealt in a similar manner to the arrow in his shoulder, and this time, although he gagged from the pain, he kept a hold of his awareness.

A little later still, dragging himself on hands and knees like some beast away from the site of his defeat, he moved over to his pack which, thank Aule for his grace, was still where he had left it the night before.

Fumbling, limited by the pain each breath levied, he reached for the silver flask of miruvor he had tucked back into the top of his pack last night.

"Ah, right now I could grant Minuial her point, my friend. If you were close I would kiss you."

The wonderful elixir of the elves was a staple that Legolas had insisted Gimli carry whenever he left his home.

The stopper yielded, and Gimli took a swig that would surely put life into a dead mumakil.

Peace and life flooded through the ailing dwarf's body, and Gimli had to close his eyes for a second to squeeze back tears of gratitude.

When he opened them again the sun had finally lit the tops of the standing stones leading down to the Dimholt, and memory of Gleowyn's torment drove him to his feet. Where he swayed in a most alarming manner.

He sighed, then slowly picked up his pack, scattered the last remains of his fire, struggled into his coat and helmet as well as he could with only one working hand, and started down the path he had only travelled once before.

Where he had been before he could go again, so he staggered off and was lost to sight as he passed through the forbidden door.

TBC

Rose

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