Thanks for the Beta Theresa – I promise a bigger gap before the next chapter – lol.

Evensong Chapter 20

One night, such a bitter morsel of time when measured against the banquet of his life. Legolas perched in the cave opening watching the stars wheel overhead before dawn painted grey across the sky, fighting his fatigue. The mountain wind moaned its way across the pinnacles, matching his mood to their pitch.

Behind him the caves sucked at his spirit, the blacker mouth of the forced tunnel mocking his vigil. At least he had sealed the other entrance. The doors had made such a racket closing that he had darted back to the sleeping chamber to check if Gimli had roused.

Once again his hopes, only half formed, had been in vain. The dwarf lived, but nothing more. Not a glimmer of that vibrant personality lit the body on the pallet.

The elf felt like every kind of fool. It had seemed so clear, Gimli thrived in caves, and he would heal in these caves better than out of them. The elf, shaken by his encounter with the cave-troll, overwhelmed by the sudden crowd of men, had allowed the confusion that had left them behind. Hastily he had carried Gimli into the living quarters he had explored briefly before joining the others in the workroom. And he had been left alone, in blessed peace.

Peace, that crept like time, moment by moment into nothing.

Gimli’s wounds were extensive. Legolas had peeled him out of leather and armour, sponged blood from abrasions and bruises. Winced at the deep purple stain that marred his muscled torso, the legacy of a cave troll’s kick. The elf had purloined a soft wool robe from an ornately carved clothes press. Wrapped his friend in its comfort and laid him on the bed. Sat with him, sang to him, exhorted him, cried.

Legolas listened to the star song; it was as measured, distant and beautiful as ever. Eternal and unmoved by the concerns of those that lived and breathed. Worlds could end and still they would sing.

The elf wished his world could end, but it would not. He could not remember when last he had slept, or ate, or walked unfettered under the sun. His mind spun on, considering the endurance of elves. Alone in the dark he snorted in derision.

His breath still flowed, his heart still beat, his flesh - he held up a long fingered hand, examining joint and sinew - his flesh was unchanging and would remain so. Ending was not an option for him, continuing seemed near impossible. The sea tugged at him, reminding him of alternates, muted still by the grace of Radagast, but then all of his contact with Arda seemed muted after yesterday. Something had changed; perhaps it was in him after all

The star song faded, drowned by the jubilation that heralded the dawn. Legolas turned his back on the silvering sky and slipped back into the dark. Gimli may have stirred.

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Gimli woke to the benison of warm sun on his face and, after a beat, grinding pain. It felt as if some beast was gnawing on his insides. His breath hitched and caught, an involuntary attempt to control the agony, and in an instant there was someone beside him.

“Gimli?” Legolas voice sounded raw. “Gimli do you wake?”

The dwarf prised open his eyes, drank in the sight of his friend kneeling beside his bed, a hand reaching for his forehead with a cloth. Gimli curled himself slightly to one side in the bed, let his left hand slide down over his middle, and rested the ring on the source of his distress. He blinked, the pain eased. Legolas dabbed at the sweat on his face with a cloth that felt nearly as cool as Yavanna’s hand.

Gimli felt his breathing even out again. He studied his elven friend as he turned to wring the rag out in a bowl he had ready beside the bed. Legolas looked pale, forlorn, his eyes were faintly pink-rimmed and his lips pale and thin as he concentrated. The crease that sometimes appeared between his brows looked permanently etched there now.

Gimli inched his right arm away from his body, crept it out of the bedclothes and curled his hand around Legolas’ bicep. He really did not feel up too much speech right now, but he needed to reassure the elf.

Legolas looked down at the contact, met Gimli’s deep brown eyes with his own glittering blue, blinked at the sudden tears that caused the room to swim unsteadily before him.

“Lad?” Legolas blinked at Gimli’s rusty voice. “ I will not leave you, now or ever. Rest.”

Legolas felt his chest tighten on an involuntary sob, controlled it with the last remnants of his will, turned eyes of fire onto his friend, only to find Gimli’s eyes shut again. The dwarf had drifted back into sleep, still holding onto his arm.

Legolas tucked the limp hand back under the blanket, and then stood suddenly, feeling faintly nauseous but also as if he had removed something from his back; a dead weight perhaps. Air from the open windows kept the chamber fresh, but he found himself longing again for trees, and grass. He took a step towards the window, but then stopped, listening.

Voices. So muffled he could hardly discern them. Silently he drifted to the door of the chamber, cracked it open to the cold breath of the mountain. There, the faint sound of men, from down the passage with the doors. The doors he had shut.

Legolas sighed. Aragorn would have sent a search party. He should go, open the doors, let in the noise and bustle and stench of men.

Legolas leaned against the door’s frame, all the energy gone from his body. He looked over at the dwarf, sleeping peacefully, thought about waking him, moving him, carrying him through all the twists and jagged turns between this place and the outside.

Gimli had said he would not leave him. Fever speaking, but words some part of his own soul had seized on as truth, no matter what cold sense and millennia of experience told him.

He had never caught the dwarf out in a lie. He would let it be, for the moment.

The voices of men faded, went away. Legolas felt a twinge of guilt Aragorn would worry. The elf knew he would eventually keep his word to the king, but Gimli needed him now, and the king had more than enough helpers.

Legolas thought about Gimli’s words again, shut the mountain out of the chamber by pulling the door to, and then wandered listlessly back to the dwarf’s bedside. He sat, completely at the end of himself. He felt Anor bathing his back in comfortable warmth and, like a stick whirling in a flood, was drawn by his utter exhaustion into the path of dreams, folding gracefully in boneless relaxation into the seductive gap left between Gimli’s feet and the end of the mattress.

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Radagast’s breath caught as he opened the chamber door cautiously, revealing the pair of them back-lit by the now setting sun.  Neither sprawled figure moved at his intrusion and the wizard felt his heart clench.

“No!” he whispered.

Bleak despair dimmed the Maia’s light, and Earnulf, treading on his heels pushed the door roughly more open so that he could see.

Earnulf favoured action over despair.

“We have found them,” he called over his shoulder to the other four members of the squad, and then he clattered into the chamber with all the energy of a spring storm.

In an eye-blink the elf was awake, and crouched over his friend like a mother cat with one kitten, ivory-handled knife in hand.

Radagast, his spirit inflating as quickly as it had constricted, stepped in between the startled guard and the still sleep-sodden elf.

“Legolas, friend. We were worried.”  The elf looked at him through eyes that were only half in this world, then their depths cleared as a familiar rumble reached all of them from Gimli.

 “Fool of an elf, can you not tell friend from foe without me pointing it out?”

Seeing the smile that stole over the elf’s face was worth any momentary pain the wizard had suffered.

Casually the elf sheathed his knife, and then turned to fill a beaker from a jug that stood ready nearby. Silently he offered it to the dwarf, who took it, and even allowed the elf to prop him up so that he could sip the water. They both made no comment on the fact that it took both of Gimli’s unsteady hands to hold the beaker.

Radagast stared, fascinated, at the ring with its blue stone that Gimli wore on the middle finger of his left hand. The wizard could feel its power from across the room.

Earnulf moved over to the window and pulled it closed, shutting out the now freezing breeze. He cast a look over to the elf and the dwarf then called Esgarth to his side and directed his sergeant to set up a camp in this room. It was apparent that they would not be moving for an appreciable length of time and the room sported a fireplace as well as a scuttle full of fire-rock. Esgarth settled happily to meal preparation and one trooper was detailed as guard, the other two settled quickly, veterans enough to take ease where it was offered.

Radagast took a turn about the room, drawn to the row of books. One lay open on a polished desk. The blocky Dwarvish runes finished half way down the open page.

Radagast kindled the oil lamp set in an alcove above the desk and flicked through the pages, reverently.

Legolas arrived at his shoulder, “Narvi kept records. Do you read the runes of Moria?”

Radagast smiled up at the elf. “Slowly, but Narvi had a fair hand and see,” the wizard pointed to a section in quite a different hand, the elvish script flowing slantwise across the page. “Celebrimbor added his tale to the mix.”

“Here hold this for me” One of the wizard’s arms was snugged against his body in a sling so he handed the book to Legolas to shut and re-shelve and then picked another, the first bound tome, for Legolas to lay open on the desk.

The wizard leaned forward as the first lines became clear. “Ah,” he breathed. “ She stole his body from the orcs. How small a flicker of life she must have nursed.”

“Aye, “ Legolas spent a moment remembering the gruesome tale of Celebrimbor’s close-mouthed end, of Sauron’s revenge. Celebrimbor’s body carried as a banner on a pole in front of Sauron’s minions. Imagined Narvi’s stout, loyal figure as she tracked him, and recovered his body, no doubt thinking she would be honouring a corpse only to find the spark of eternal life still flickering in his breast. “I wonder how she kept him alive.”

Radagast tapped a long bony finger on the book. “It will be told in here, no doubt.”

Legolas bent to flick through the pages, but Radagast turned to find Gimli’s silent gaze fixed on him. The wizard drifted over to the dwarf’s bedside, Gimli slid the ring around his finger with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand.

“You can see her, wizard?”

The wizard nodded to the ring and was answered with a similar gesture from Gimli

“Aye, and feel her power, Gimli.”

“Legolas does not.” Gimli turned a supplicating look up to the wizard’s kindly, seamed face. The Maia raised a surprised eyebrow and turned again to examine the elf, who was temporarily lost in Narvi’s diary.

“That is – unexpected.” The Maia stroked his beard with his good hand, bristling eyebrows drawn together in thought.

Gimli reached up and laid his left hand on the Maia’s injured arm. His eyes seemed to look inward for a second, and then there was a pulse of power from Valda, followed by a strangled moan from Gimli. As pale as death the dwarf fell back against the pillows, and Legolas jerked up from the book as if he had been stung.

“What have you done to him?”  Legolas was suddenly at the wizard’s side – a murderous gleam dancing in his eyes.

Radagast held up both hands in protest, and then looked at his hitherto broken left arm in surprise. Quickly he stripped off the sling and rubbed his right hand down his left forearm.

He exchanged a glance of deep bafflement with the elf, and then they both turned to look at Gimli, who moaned and blinked his eyes open again.

“That was probably not wise,” he gasped.

Legolas sat down on the side of the bed and peered into his friend’s face. Gimli sighed, and then flicked a glance up to the wizard.

“While I was unconscious, before you came, I had this dream…” The telling of his visit with the Valar took all of the time left before Esgarth announced dinner.

TBC