Evensong 11

Narvi left the mountainside and entered the passageways, carrying with her a fresh-cut bundle of branches. The paths she walked were first carved when the world was shaped; her chisel had refined the twisting vents and echoing chambers over the long centuries. Valda guided her hand in this work, Valda and her own craft sense.

Narvi had been fortifying their hideout for three thousand years – labyrinth hardly did the complex knot of tunnels and dead ends justice. Over millennia Narvi cut her jokes, her false starts and her boredom into the bones of her home.

Some passages were dwarf-sized and long, ending after a backbreaking distance in pitfalls or dead ends. Some started large then narrowed; some did the reverse. The most decorated were likely to end in a statue or a sheer view down the mountain. The plainest led variously to traps, dead-ends, or perhaps a storeroom or, one, to the workroom.

None were marked; Narvi knew all of the secrets of Methedras and the caves that tunnelled it. Her life, that she lived before she started this work, was a faint band of brightness lost so far back in time that she wondered sometimes if it was just another dream sent by the ring.

Narvi, needing no light, traced the passages of her memory back from the green forests of the mountainside to his side. Celebrimbor only moved from his cell-like rest room to the dawn cave, or the workshop. Narvi served him for all else – without her he would not exist, without him nor would she.

He was working. The tap, tap of his hammer as constant as rain. The workroom, open to the west, was bitterly cold, windblown specks of snow swirling in spirals by the cave mouth. He never noticed, his attention only on the intricate construction that framed Narvi’s carefully shaped entrance to the inner chambers. His voice sounded as sharp and as clear as the sun seen through green ice as he sang his magic into the mithril. Mithril she had mined and refined for him before he woke, after the lesser enemy was gone. Valda had promised, Valda had delivered. Valda warded. While he worked he remained whole, Valar bless.

Narvi strewed most of the pine branches on the floor knowing the spicy smell pleased him, and then, fanciful, she tucked a couple into the pipes and fastenings that anchored the great construction to the cavern wall.

Celebrimbor glanced at her and then at the spiky branches. She caught the bright glitter of his eye, amusement lightened his song.

Narvi huffed out a breath, turned away, and then stiffened as Valda warned her.

His song cut off, shockingly mid-note.

The web of life that sustained them pulsed, bent, shouted out that invaders had come.

A great blow echoed and re-echoed through the caverns. Doom!

Fine dust sifted silently into their cavern from the roof.

“Master?” Narvi’s little used voice sounded weak to her own ears.

“I just need to finish the mouthpiece, old friend. Then the Valar will release us.” The elf fixed her in his obsessed gaze. “Can we hold?”

“How do they know we are here?” Narvi ran her hand down the curving pipe to where he was standing, listening, and intent.

Celebrimbor shut his eyes. “They are called. The great enemy is not powerless, he feels me working, knows my intent. Stalks me on the path of dreams. Such a little chink in the wall the Valar set him behind, but when he reaches through, all the evil in the world comes to him and obeys his sending.”

The elf took up his hammer again and turned from the dwarf. “We must hold, Narvi. Just until I finish the mouthpiece.”

Doom, rang through the caverns, doom, doom, doom.

Valda exerted her power. Through Narvi it robbed from the living to keep out the forces of evil. Elves and the other magical beings still living in Middle-earth gasped and felt diminished; even men felt the hair on their necks lifting, as if ghosts walked on their graves.

Celebrimbor swayed and his skin took on the grey look of death. Then he straightened, brightened, his uncanny song resumed, as did his delicate shaping of the end of evil.

00000

Fangorn the ent, raging at the bottom of a pit-trap, finally got to the end of the names he could call the orcs and other less than savoury beasts that had trailed in ones and twos past his prison to vanish into his woods, called to assault Methedras.

“…Burárum,” he rumbled.

The glade of dark-hearted beech trees that had allowed the pit to be dug by the selfsame burárum, snickered, branches twisting in the evening light. Tiger-striped wasps swarmed around the tree trunks, drinking the honeydew the beeches exuded, properly the food of forest birds, conspicuous here by their absence.

Fangorn stilled as the reaching tendrils of Narvi’s need siphoned the life force of the great forest. Most of the wasps dropped to the earth, stone dead.

The black glade hissed, leaves rubbing angrily as the effect passed. Anger tightened the air and above ground an orc gave a frightened squeal, suddenly cut off.

The roots of the tainted grove twisted and writhed around the sides of the pit, frustrating Fangorn’s efforts at pulling the sides down. The ent rocked back on his heels and glared out and up. The suck-swish sound of the wind in the leaves tormented him.

The crowns of the dark trees, framed by the lip of his prison, leered at him.

“Time and beyond for weeding,” snarled  Fangorn.” By root and branch, I must compose myself and consider, think how to cut out this rotten wood. Culling is the task of the shepherd and it is overdue.”

Slow to anger but boiling now with impatience the ent turned his mind to his task, recalling the secret names of the trees in his field of view.

00000

Dervoron saluted his king as he shepherded his motley crew and their lowing charges. The gusting wind drove the smell of cattle ahead of him.

Several of the men of Crossbourne, most sporting crudely bound wounds, drove the animals.

Dervoron’s soldiers rode at the rear, convincing the baulky animals to keep moving. The villagers’ faces looked haunted, the eyes that flicked up to see the royal party dark and red-rimmed,  one or two touched a knuckle to a forehead. Mostly they concentrated on keeping the beasts in line.

Women appeared as if by magic, each man was quickly escorted by exclaiming groups of family. Others looked in vain at the party, and then craned to see if there was more coming. The numbers were small enough that it soon became obvious that none followed.

Oda’s mother threw her apron over her face and started wailing. Soon others followed, relatives and friends hanging off one another in grief-stricken groups.

Aragorn raised a beckoning arm to Dervoron and his men. Dervoron leaned down and spoke a word or two to one of the last of the village drovers, and then trotted his weary horse to his king’s side. Dervoron’s face looked grim, the six men he commanded disentangled themselves from the cattle and formed up behind their sergeant.

Aragorn nodded at the village. “This was all you found?”

Dervoron nodded once. “The orcs captured and ran off with at least eight villagers, Sire. They had butchered twenty or so of the cattle when the farmers caught up with them and attacked. The orcs were in a hurry, it seems, Valar be praised.  The great beasts they were driving and most of the company had crossed the river, otherwise I think I would have bought none of the villagers back. The orcs scooped up those that fell, or were in their way, grabbed the butchered meat and fled into the night.”

Aragorn straightened in the saddle. “We must stop this. Dervoron, stand down your men and get some rest but first send Duilin and Earnulf to me.” Aragorn turned and looked at his companions.

“If you will excuse me, gentlemen, it is time that I took control of events.”

00000

It took until late afternoon to shift Aragorn’s camp off the plateau to the ferry and hence across the Snowbourne.

The king sent a small group of three scouts away on the first crossing, with a mission to track the orcs. Then he briefed Earnulf on the force to be left guarding Crossbourne, sent messengers to Edoras to inform king Elfwine of his and the orcs’ actions and chivvied Duilin into paying Gondorian gold for the soldiers’ billets in the village and provisions for the group that was going on to Fangorn.

Eventually, Legolas found him upstairs at the inn in the village, doing what he could to help Sarthor with the remaining wounded.

“Aragorn?”

The elf leaned in the doorway. Oda, her mother and the king exchanged glances over her brother’s fever-bothered body.

Aragorn looked at the elf.

“Have you finished here?” Legolas’ soft voice held a hint of steel.

Oda’s mother made a shooing motion to the king, despite Oda’s dismayed clutch at the woman’s arm. Oda twisted her brow in mortification; her mother glanced at her then shrugged her shoulders at Aragorn.

“I can look after my boy, have been for years, and will be for more. Thank you, your royalness, whatever; he is a mite easier now. Off you go.”

She managed a watery smile for the king, the smile of a woman who had seen most of life come and go through her taproom. She pushed Oda. “You can go downstairs and help as well. The soldiers will want their ale, and the villagers. Go.”

The king smiled at the woman, acknowledging her bravery, and waved Oda out of the room in front of him. He joined Legolas on the landing.

The elf eyed his friend. “You look weary. Gimli was right.”

Aragorn cocked an eyebrow at the elf.

“He said he saw you send Duilin away on an errand at noon meal, then left yours when the healer called you here. It is nigh on sunset, Aragorn.”

Aragorn leaned on the banister rail to examine the crowd gathering in the tavern, and then started down the stairs, picking up his bodyguard as a shadow on the way. He started to make his way over to the far wall where Gimli was ensconced in a booth by the fire, nursing a tankard of ale, the remains of a hearty meal on the table in front of him.

The elf caught Aragorn’s arm, when they were about half way across the crowded room.

“Would you talk to Gimli, Aragorn? About this morning. He will not tell me what ails him and is muttering about returning to Aglarond. I will go and bespeak a meal for you.”

The elf darted away in the direction of the kitchen and was quickly lost behind Earnulf’s impressive bulk.

Aragorn looked at the young Rohirrim. “Go get yourself an ale, lad. Keep your boys company, over there.” The king pointed at a group of Earnulf’s off-duty soldiers. “ Or talk to Oda and see if the villagers feels they will be able to manage with the protection I have planned.” The king waved at the bar.

Earnulf scanned the room and then nodded at Aragorn, departing towards the bar as directed but clearly still feeling he was on duty.

Aragorn slid into the booth beside Gimli.

A harried barmaid slid a tankard in front of the king before he even got himself settled. The dwarf eyed it and then lifted his own. Aragorn had the feeling he was hiding behind the ale.

“Legolas is worried about you,” said Aragorn. The king picked up a discarded bread roll and took a bite, his appetite reminding him of his missed meal. “Care to tell me what is wrong.”

“The elf worries for Arda,” grumbled Gimli. “ Not ten minutes hence he was worried about you.”

Aragorn held the dwarf’s eye, not letting him hide in gruffness. Gimli sighed and placed his tankard on the table with exaggerated care.

“I will let you judge me, Aragorn. This morning, I felt it all again, on the riverbank. The smell threw me straight back ten years. I do not want to face cave trolls again, Aragorn. Have I been called to this task only to find I have turned coward in my dotage?”

Aragorn laughed at him, completely unsympathetic. Gimli stared at the king, startled at his evident mirth, and then let his lip curl up a little.

Aragorn shook his head. “Where there are cave trolls there must be caves, my friend. I, we, will need you. Legolas and Radagast will be in their element in the forest, but we will need you before the end. I can feel it.”

Gimli lifted his tankard in two hands, and then paused looking into its brown depths as if truth might surface there.

“Then I suppose I will not go back to Aglarond, then, just yet. But I hear them in my dreams, Aragorn. The thud of their foul feet coming for me in my sleep.”

“We all have our demons, Gimli. I doubt you think the sea makes a coward of Legolas, yet he is vulnerable. I fear my end, and dream of Arwen bereft until I can scarce face her at breakfast. But still you keep me company, and you honour no cowards. Fear makes not a coward, which you know well enough; actions are what count.”

Gimli looked long into Aragorn’s face, and then took a drink of his ale.

“We start for Fangorn forest tomorrow?”

“First light,” said Aragorn, smiling up at Oda as she loaded the table with savoury smelling plates.

“Radagast claims he can follow the disturbances to Arda’s magic even through Fangorn’s twisted heart.” Aragorn speared a piece of meat and chewed, watching Earnulf as he courteously relieved Oda of the empty tray and held open the kitchen door for her. He glanced at the dwarf, who met his twinkle with a roll of his eyes, and a final sup of his drink.

“Eat, or the blond nursemaid will fret.” Gimli sat back on his chair and grinned at the king.

“I’ll tell him you said that.”

Aragorn, none the less, bent to his meal.

TBC

Rose Sared