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Evensong  by Rose Sared

Theresa excelled herself, thank you my dear. Two chapters to Beta in a week – heavens! RC

Evensong Ch 19

 

The shadows of evening that gathered in the workroom fled to the corners as the entrance was filled, belatedly, with the soldiers of Aragorn’s guard, sent to bring torches mere minutes, or a lifetime, ago. The ringing sound of swords being drawn echoed against the stone surfaces as Dervoron and his troop saw the shape of the troll.

Legolas took his eyes from Gimli’s unmoving form just long enough to face the oncoming soldiery, “The troll lives not – look to your liege.” He gestured abruptly to Aragorn where he lay against the wall on the far side of the room, stepped over to relieve one of the men of his torch, and then turned back to the dwarf, dismissing the guards from his mind.

He crouched beside his friend, grateful for the fresh breeze that blew into the cave. Hardly daring he reached out to touch Gimli’s shoulder, hesitated, and then smoothed a silver lock of hair away from his friend’s cheek instead.

“Gimli?” Legolas called softly.

The wavering flame from the streaming torch painted the dwarf’s face in gold, its moving light tricking the eye, making it impossible to see if his friend breathed. Certainly his eyes lay shut and blood marred his forehead, trickling from a cut above his hairline. The wind from the outside smelled of night and rain, and it lifted the stray silver hairs on Gimli’s beard.

Legolas glanced around; men surrounded the king, and Radagast was directing another two to move Celebrimbor’s body. The wizard held his left arm braced against his body with his right hand.

Legolas sighed, leaned the torch against the wall and gazed longingly at the light from the first stars that danced in the deepening night. He breathed, and then scooped his friend’s limp form into his arms and rose to his feet in one fluid movement. Turning with his burden he headed for the main corridor.

“Legolas?” Radagast called to him.

“I must tend him. Will you follow, with Aragorn?”

The wizard read the strain and some of what Legolas was holding back in the set of the elf’s immobile face, held his eye for a beat and then nodded, once, releasing him. Legolas turned again and vanished into the dark of the corridor that led to the door.

00000

Aragorn, having been thrown forcibly against the unyielding wall of the cave and subsequently suffering from bruising that marred the right side of his body from abraded shoulder to swelling knee, did not really come to his senses until well into the morning of the day after the horn had been blown, despite the healers insisting that he be roused at hourly intervals to check his head injury.

He woke after a blissful hour or so of sleep to pain and a head that felt like a lead weight.

“Drink, Sire?”

Aragorn sniffed at the beaker and then swallowed the acrid brew, eager for its analgesic properties. He sipped gladly at the beaker of water offered as a chaser blinking at the bodyguard whose muscular arm propped him up, and then turning his head carefully to scan the inside of his tent. After a pause he asked, “What happened, Dervoron? I feel as if a rock fell on me.”

“Cave troll?” Dervoron prompted.

The king closed his eyes again with a groan, the events of the previous day flooding back. Eyes still closed he asked, “Radagast, Legolas, Gimli?”

The silence that followed forced Aragorn’s eyes wide open. “What?”

Dervoron gently laid his king back into freshly plumped pillows, moved his chair so that the king could see his face and then seemed to find something very interesting to look at on the knee of his breeches.

“Captain?” Aragorn could tell the news was not good, but he needed to hear it. “Report.”

Dervoron snapped his head up and met his commander’s eye. “Radagast the wizard, Sire, has a broken arm. The healers have set it, and he is out yonder,” the captain waved a hand to the north, “ fixing up a pyre for the elf we found in the cave.”

“And the lords of Ithilien and Aglarond?”

Dervoron returned to inspecting his knee. “Missing, Sire.”

Aragorn tried to sit up, groaned as the effort made the tent dim around him, and then used the sudden support granted him by Dervoron’s lunge to help as an excuse to clutch at the man’s shoulder with a grip of steel, “What do you mean, missing?” he hissed.

Dervoron gently pried the fingers from his shoulder and once again attempted to make the king comfortable. Aragorn was out of energy, but not out of determination, his blazing gaze assured the Captain he needed to provide more information.

“The lord Legolas, he carried the lord Gimli out of the cave first, Sire. We thought he was ahead of us on the way out, it was not until we reached camp that we realised they were not part of the greater party.”

“Where are we?”

“Camped in the combe below the caves, Sire. Healfred moved the tents up after the orcs vanished yesterday. Earnulf is back in the caves searching, even now, Sire. We anticipated your concern.”

Aragorn subsided slightly, his pained body reminding him he was not up to arguing with command decisions he agreed with anyway.

To his chagrin he realised he must have drifted off to sleep again; the painkillers, he thought muzzily. The sound of challenge and counter challenge outside of his tent was what roused him this time. He forced reluctant eyes open to see Dervoron, moving towards the tent flap.

Aragorn swallowed and called out. “Get them to bring the report in here, Captain.”

Dervoron turned a look of deep disapproval on his liege. Aragorn sent his best kingly glare back. The captain nodded, not willing to argue.

Summoned by the Captain, Earnulf entered the tent, doffed his helmet and bowed to Aragorn. The King finished wriggling himself into a more tolerable sitting position, with Dervoron’s silent help, and then turned his attention on the Rohirrim.

“Did you find them?”

Earnulf blinked, looked at the bump made by the King’s feet under the blanket and then swallowed.

“Nay, Sire, ” he risked a glance up but Aragorn’s face was stony. “We searched all the way back to the cave with the spell on it, Esgarth showed me how to get through the wall bit and we went along the passage – but it came to a dead end, Sire.”

Aragorn frowned, intensifying the expression as Sarthor the healer slipped into the tent quietly, glanced at his patient, and then busied himself with some potion on the other side of the tent. Aragorn dismissed the interruption and turned back to Earnulf. “The doors were shut?”

Earnulf shrugged, “We could find no doors, Sire. Nor could we find sight or sound of any other being even though we searched a goodly portion of that maze of caves.”

Aragorn held the young man in his gaze for a moment, and then waved him off with a flick of his fingers.

“Thank you, Earnulf. It seems that I need to go back into the caves myself, to open the doors.”

Aragorn, to Earnulf’s palpable dismay pulled back the bed covers and went to swing his legs out of the bed. The young guard stepped forward and Sarthor was suddenly there, his lips thinned in carefully schooled annoyance. Aragorn paused as his feet hit the ground.

“Damn!” The King’s soft voiced complaint coincided with the colour draining from his face and a sweat breaking out on his brow. Both of his hands went to cradle his swollen knee that was protesting being bent with some vigour.

Sarthor was beside him even before Dervoron, scooping up his legs and placing them back on the bed.

The king tried another-‘I am not amused’- look on the healer. It bounced. “Balrog’s balls, Sarthor. You could have warned me.”

“You would not have listened.” The healer was unrepentant, twitching the covers straight across the royal lap with professional efficiency.

Aragorn, still sweaty from the sudden agony, had no energy left to argue. He looked plaintively at the Rohirrim.

“Would you go back in, this afternoon? Ask Radagast to go with you, he knows the word that will open the doors.”

Sarthor offered the king a vial that contained a virulent green potion. Aragorn eyed the man and then downed the contents in one gulp.

“It could be a day or two before I will be able to join you.”

Earnulf caught Dervoron’s eye, read the dismissal in the captain’s expression, and bowed deeply. “I will report back again this evening, my lord.”

Aragorn, his eyes glazing over, simply nodded.

0000

Gimli, observing the elf and his actions from some disembodied place that appeared to be set in the ceiling of the cave, let out a growl of annoyance.

A gentle hand wiped across his brow, soft as down and as cool as dew, the image, or viewpoint or whatever it was, faded into mist and Gimli twisted to look into the forest-deep eyes of the lady sitting beside him. Lady seemed too faint a word to describe her presence. Once more Gimli knew he was in the keeping of a Vala. Since he was once again in Aulë’s hall he supposed he was in the presence of Yavanna.

“Why are you vexed, my champion?”

“The fool elf was carrying me around, again,” Gimli blurted before he could edit the thought.

A tiny crease pulled up at the corner of the lady’s mouth. “He is very fond of you.”

Gimli looked down, took a second to enjoy the rich red colour of his beard, let his eye catch on the blue stone in the ring that now sat on his middle finger.

“If I am here, am I truly dead?” Gimli lifted his eyes to those of the lady, her gaze shifted slightly from his.

“That is a matter of choice, yet, my son.”

“Whose?”

“Ah.” The male voice that joined in was familiar to the dwarf. He turned his head to the left and saw Mahal, his lord, sitting in his marble chair, a thoughtful expression on his noble face. “Weighing up one thing and another, Gimli, Gloin’s son, it might be yours.”

Gimli sank back to the floor, groaning. Looked up at the misty sparkling heights of Aulë’s hall remembering every injury he had sustained lately and in the past, feeling this wonderful completeness, feeling his age. The unfamiliar weight of the ring sent a pulse from his finger up his arm.

“The ring,” said Gimli. “I picked it up just before Stone-Water attacked.”

“The ring,” Yavanna agreed. She brushed a finger over the blue stone. “It is keeping you alive, just, in Arda, because you wish to stay there, with him.”

Gimli found himself looking down again from ceiling height. Legolas had found some homely chamber within the mountain equipped with a south-facing window. The elf had made up a pallet and put the dwarf down. Gimli could not see his own body for the elf hunched over him, however Legolas’ back was eloquent with grief and fear. Oil lamps cast a warm glow over the scene but the long hand Gimli could see holding his own was as white as spray.

“If I keep doing this to him he will fade anyway and join us, righteously annoyed, my lord and lady. He is frail enough from resisting the summoning of the lord Manwë, and would hate to be forsworn. His oath to stay with Aragorn he clings to with stubbornness to match any of the Eldar past or present.”

The Valar shared a glance over the dwarf’s head, perhaps thinking of elves, and oaths. Yavanna turned her head to look once more at Gimli.

“Tell me of the ring, my lady.” Gimli didn’t feel like he had much to lose for being pert.

“Valda, her name is Valda, Worthy, in common. She was Celebrimbor’s gift to his great friend, Narvi.” Yavanna placed a finger on the blue stone and drew its radiance to herself.  “The ring cleaves to dwarf-kind and has never fallen under the influence of the great betrayer. Narvi used her to sustain Celebrimbor throughout the days of Sauron’s rise and fall, Narvi used her to heal Celebrimbor of his death wound so he could finish his great work of revenge.” Yavanna looked past Gimli to Mahal. “Those great feäs have fled home to Valinor and are joined with us now; but Valda remains, the last magic ring in Middle-earth. She can still draw on my power to heal, but at a cost to all the many lives great and small that fall under my care. As ring bearer she will let you live as long as you have a will to do so. She is a great treasure; and in the wrong hands the last great threat to your world.”

“And if I choose to stay with you now?”

“You are both here only in spirit. Like you she is more than spirit, she is matter. If you stay now she will remain in Arda, hidden in the mountain for any hand to find, or stored in the treasury of Gondor or Aglarond until her provenance is forgotten and she is freed into the world to work mischief.”

“And if I return to Middle-earth again, to life, to pain?”

“You could bring her to Valinor, come over the sea with your friend when his vow is discharged, the first of your kind to attend our halls in your mortal form, pass the ring into our safe keeping. Third time pays for all, Gimli.”

It was no great matter to decide. Gimli simply gazed at her trusting the lady to read the clear decision of his heart; and then suddenly he had a thought.

“How on earth do you think I will be able to convince that fool of an elf to let me sail with him?”

The hall faded away on the susurration of the Valar’s laughter.

“You always did enjoy a challenge, son of Gloin.”

TBC

 





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