Beta’d with uncommon despatch but her usual skill by Theresa Green. Love her and her writing. Thanks.RC

Evensong Ch 18

The door at the end of the corridor was shut. Even to Gimli’s dark-adapted eye it was hard to discern that it was actually a door and not just another of this twisting warren’s dead-ends.

He ran his hands over the seamless panels, feeling for information, and was thwarted by the craftsmanship. Annoyed, he thumped the stone with the side of his fist, heard the muted echo that spoke of space behind the barrier, and then let all sound die away feeling the tug on his heart pulling him like a thread through cloth. He leaned his forehead against the cold door, eyes shut, concentrating, hoping he was not leading the whole party on nothing more than the urgings of an elderly digestive system.

“Gimli?” Legolas spoke softly from behind him, somehow managing to convey in the single word both his desire to be out of the caves, now, and yet also his resolve to support his friend and follow where he was led.

Aragorn’s voice chimed in, “What have you found, Gimli?”

The dwarf turned and stepped out of the alcove that housed the door back into the wider corridor. His friends huddled in the now yellowish light given out by Radagast’s staff. Gimli blinked in the brightness.

“There is a door – the groove runs to it, and I suppose, through it. The doors are shut now, but for ages, see,” Gimli indicated where the groove finished, shy of the alcove by about an arm’s length, “they must have stood open, folded back to here.”

Aragorn peered at the dwarf, then at the groove and then around the uneasy company. He let his gaze linger for a moment on the elf, who was staring back down the corridor, and unguarded expression of unease marring his fair face.

“Can you open them?” the king asked.

Gimli shook his head, frowning.

“Radagast.” Aragorn singled out the wizard. “When we entered Moria the Hollin gates were shut. Gandalf used some power to reveal the opening code. Think you?”

The wizard wrinkled his forehead. “ The world has changed, Aragorn, I know not what I might or might not do.” The wizard stroked his beard, deep in thought for a moment, and then he looked up again. “Send someone to the main cavern for a torch, Aragorn, I cannot both light and work. Legolas, if you please?”

The wizard beckoned the elf over even as Aragorn nodded to Dervoron who trotted off to the main cavern to bring back a torch.

Radagast spoke to the elf again. “Legolas, would you join me?”

The elf turned eyes that looked huge and shadowed to his friend – then seemed to shake himself out of a black space; gracefully he moved to flank the wizard and the dwarf.

Aragorn touched him on the shoulder, raised an eyebrow in silent query.

“There is nothing now in the dark that is not there in the light, Aragorn. The men will be safe.”

Gimli saw the King’s shoulders relax slightly at the elf’s reassurance.

Gimli turned and re-entered the alcove that contained the doors, Radagast’s staff this time lighting the way.

The wizardly light caught on inlaid patterns in the surface, odd reflecting twirls began to become apparent, a complex writhing knot surfaced into visibility, eventually sparking a border that outlined the double doors.

Aragorn looked between the wizard and the elf.

“Any clues?”

“There is no riddle this time.” Legolas frowned at the doors. “We could try what worked before.”

“Mellon,” intoned Aragorn.

The doors remained shut.

A quadruple sigh breathed around the room.

Gimli walked up to the reflecting pattern and traced part of it with his fingers. So fine was the work that even looking at it he could not feel the inlay work as an irregularity in the surface.

Behind him the wizard tried a string of opening words – to no effect. He stepped back discouraged. Aragorn looked at him.

“I know not whether my failure is due to the changes I feel in the powers that govern Middle-earth, or just because I do not know the right key.” The wizard tapped his staff on the doors. “We may need to find another way in, friend Gimli.”

Gimli, despondent, nodded, distracted by the pattern, it reminded him of the iron work knot his father had made for his mother – a token that hung ever after in his parent’s chamber.

The dwarf glanced around the dispirited faces of his companions and drew in his breath

“Before we give up I have a word to try. “ He looked sheepish, flicked his gaze around the three interested faces, “It is in the secret language.”

He spoke, and the doors swung open in silent hinges, rumbling under their own great weight as they reached their greatest aperture. The bang as they seated themselves echoed and re-echoed in the stony vaults behind and now ahead, of the travellers.

Daylight, dim, but after such a long time underground bright enough to smear Gimli’s vision with tears, pulled the elf into the corridor on the other side of the doorway. Aragorn and Radagast gazed at Gimli for a moment, astonished by his success, and then they followed Legolas, heading for the light like so many moths to a flame.

00000

Stone-Water-Worn-Smooth squatted in the rough tunnel formed by his mother and brooded on the turmoil he felt in the sinew of the range. Rock rumbled far and near, not happy with change, resisting the new order with blind stubbornness. Stone-Water found his emotions in complete accord with the mood of the mountain.

It was all spoiled, his feeling for the rock felt muzzy, his sense of depth skewed, his reason for living, his lodestone, his mother – gone.

Distressed, Stone-Water tapped his club on the floor, despondent. He thought he might just stay here for the rest of his life, guarding his mother’s tomb. He thought that soon, when it was night, he would go back into the horrible bright cave and pull down rocks until the opening was sealed. He thought he might pile up the shiny metal all around his mother and then go find some bones to make a proper shrine. If he could not get enough bones out of the dead thing that was in the cave with his mother he would get some more out of the running things he would catch. Stone-Water banged his club on the floor in decision.

Another bang answered his temper. Stone-Water lifted his head, sniffing. The air currents had changed. Something had shifted, back past the main cave. It sounded like a door opening.

Stone-Water sniffed again. The air spoke to him, the changeable element not much altered by the events of the day; it smelt of the two legs, the shining one that frowned at him, the elf.  The smell wafted off, it had gone the other way. Stone-Water lurched to his feet crept nearer the cavern, silent, among the still friendly boulders.

More came; Stone-Water slid back a step further into the dark.

The wizard, the man and Mossy Rock; Stone-Water could smell them all and a dreadful anger started to rise in his breast. Their piping voices carried a message of doom to the cave-troll. Two leg trouble. Mother had always said stay away from two legs, but they had better stay away from her. Stone-Water was not going to let them near his mother. He moved slowly forward, the light was dimming in the cavern as the sun moved over the mountain. Stone-Water raised his club and stood just in the shade of his mother’s tunnel, where he could see into the still light cave but no one could see him.

Mossy Rock entered the cavern cautiously, he carried an axe; Stone-Water blinked at the bright shine of the metal. When he looked back Mossy Rock was staring at his poor petrified mother, the axe rose, threatening.

In the tunnel Stone-Water raised his club, ready to charge.

The dwarf stared at his mother then grunted, and lowered the axe slightly, called over his shoulder and moved further into the cave towards the opening. The wizard and the man now entered the cave – Stone-Water shut his eyes against the glare given off by the wizard’s staff, squinted and tried to follow the dwarf as he made his way around the edge of the cave.

Stone-Water watched as the dwarf suddenly stooped, snatching something that glinted up off the floor.

“Aragorn, Radagast, look!”

The man and the wizard had been staring at his mother, but now they picked their way over the shards of metal towards the dwarf.

The dwarf saw the dead thing huddled against the wall, hidden until then by the placement of his mother but revealed by the light of the wizard’s staff.

“Over there, there is someone.”

The man moved quickly over to the dead thing, pulled it over, and then gently let it roll back.

“It was an elf. He is gone now, safe in Mandos’ halls.”

The wizard moved his shining staff nearer and then, to Stone-Water’s fury, leant the burning thing against his mother’s upraised and stone knee so that he could use both hands to frame the dead face.

“Celebrimbor,” the wizard said, an ocean of sadness in his voice. The man shifted around, clambering over Granite-Glinting in order to get a better view.

Stone-Water snapped. He charged out of the tunnel swinging his club and roaring. No one should show such disrespect to his mother, and he needed the dead thing for its bones.

The man drew and raised his sword, but Stone-Water did not care, with the hand not holding the club he plucked the man from his mother’s stony knee and flung him behind him.

Stone-Water poked at the wizard with his club, the wizard flashed a bright light at him that stung his eyes and the troll stepped back. Something sharp hacked at his calf muscle. Stone–Water blinked down and saw Mossy Rock with his axe, chopping at him as if he were a tree. Stone-Water swatted the annoyance away and turned back to the wizard. Again the light made him turn away and the chopping resumed.

The troll kicked out at the annoying dwarf, the blow lifting his former pet into the air before he fell and skidded against the cave opening. The sky was too bright for the troll to see what happened to him after that, and he found his movements hampered, as if by some monstrous spider web.

Growling, the troll thrashed round peering for an enemy. The wizard was pointing his staff at him, saying some words that tightened the bonds. Stone-Water flexed his great shoulders and brought his club round in an arc that had momentum all of its own. The staff clattered to the ground and the wizard followed, clutching his arm.

There was a buzz and then a sharp sting in his ear. The troll lurched around again, waving his free hand to swat at the arrows that were peppering him, warding off the ones that would have pierced his eyes.

The elf; his mother had been frightened of the elf.

Stone-Water saw an arrow bounce off his shoulder and into his mother knocking a chip out of her. Another carried off one of her fingers as it rebounded from Stone-Water’s back. The troll roared and lurched at the shining figure that had sprung onto his mother’s petrified arm and was now running towards him, firing a stream of arrows at his head.

“No!” Stone-Water-Worn-Smooth opened his mouth to scream at the elf, tell him to stop defiling his mother, tell him…

At the last moment he met the shining eyes of the creature with the bow; the elf blinked and there was a lifetime’s pause.

Stone-Water could see the trembling force that held the bow at full stretch, could even see the spark that was the point of the arrow as its form wavered in the veil of his tears.

The troll shifted his point of focus over to his mother’s still face; the end of her nose had been knocked off in the fray. He stopped, and then took half a step back. Looked at the elf again through eyes that held no reason to live. Shut his eyes and opened his mouth, tilted his head back slightly, and waited.

“Argh! By the nine fingers of Frodo!”

The cry of anger and frustration that spilled from the elf’s throat was so loud Stone-Water’s eyes popped open again, answering to no will of his own. The arrow still pointed in his general direction but the tension was off the string. Carefully the shining being lowered the point, never taking his eyes off the troll.

“Not make me dead?” Stone-Water asked, plaintively.

Legolas looked at the troll child, looked at the statue that had been its mother, looked at the tears that still trickled unheeded down the troll’s rocky cheeks. He folded himself into a wary crouch on Granite-Glinting’s shoulder.

“No more making dead, Stone-Water-Worn-Smooth. Do you agree?”

Stone-Water raised a hand to touch his mother one last time, ignoring the sudden retargeting of the arrow

Stone-Water looked over the elf’s shoulder to the huddled shape of the man against the back wall of the cave, glanced sideways into the watchful eyes of the wizard who was clutching his injured arm but following the conversation, thought about Mossy Rock who was somewhere behind him. Looked last at the dead thing, kin of the shining elf in front of him thought that the elf might be sad, as he was sad. Stone-Water-Worn-Smooth thought he would go and sit under the mountain in the proper dark and think about these things for a long time.

“I go.” He said, at last, and then shuffled around his mother and stomped out of the cave and into the fastness of the labyrinth.

In the sudden silence Legolas heard a groan from Aragorn, and as he vaulted down from the petrified cave-troll he saw the wizard struggling to his feet. The elf headed towards the fast dimming cave opening because, from Gimli, he heard no sound at all.

TBC