The Drums in the Deep

She stirred to the scent of the dried rose petals and her hand brushed the embroidered linen of her pillow.  When had she stitched this?  Six centuries ago?  More?  As she sat beside her naneth in the spring garden and laughed over the foolish gallantry of her brothers.  The steel of night’s fading beyond the open windows shadowed her room, but it was not what had woken her.

The stench of decay was in her mind; endless festering pools of abandoned hopes and noiseless screams beneath a sky of frowning doom.  He slept. She knew it.  Alone and close to despair in a place sinking slowly back into the bones of the earth.  Seeking she knew not what with the dogged persistence of which he was capable, buoyed up by no more than a promise.

She reached out to him, her ghostly fingers brushing his lips and her song, distant as the ocean’s roar, in his ears, offering him the only comfort of which she was capable.  No Lúthien she, she thought bitterly, to take on the werewolves that confronted him.  At best a tenuous hope of fulfilment was all she could provide in these odd moments when she felt as if she existed on two planes, in two places, in two hearts.  Fleeting; too fleeting.  No more than a moment, when Aragorn was so exhausted that his barriers weakened, or when the sheer hopelessness of it all touched him. 

Taking her robe and wrapping it round her, she slipped barefoot into the corridors of Imladris.  Tea, she thought.  The answer to all things.

The fires were banked in the kitchens, and only the bakers were at work, kneading the dough that would provide the morning’s bread.  She paid them little heed, nodding politely and passing through to the small hearth where water was kept boiling to serve their needs and provide refreshment for any who rose too early for the cooks.

She was not alone.  Elbows on the table and head resting on his hands, her adar sat, looking weary beyond the capacity of even elven endurance.

‘Adar?’

‘Undómiel?’

‘Have you made tea?’ she asked.  Without waiting for a reply, she took down several of the containers and spooned what appeared to be a random mixture of leaves into a pot and added boiling water, leaving the mixture to infuse before straining the fragrant liquid into two cups.

‘You feel I need my mood lightened?’ her adar asked.

‘If you do not, then I do,’ she announced, sitting beside him and curling her fingers round his.

‘I believe there may be some honey cake,’ Elrond suggested.

‘Honey cake is nearly as good as sugared plums,’ Arwen admitted.  ‘Not quite, but it will do.  Would you care for some?’

‘What brings you here, my Evenstar, in the hour before dawn?’ Elrond accepted the square of honey cake, breaking off a section and eating it absently.

‘What news did my brothers bring?’ Arwen disregarded the question.  Elrond knew only too well what disturbed his daughter’s rest.  ‘They stayed barely long enough to speak to you.’

‘There have been attacks in the Angle,’ Elrond murmured.  ‘Someone – several someones are determined to draw the Rangers away from their duties and bring them back where they can be picked off more easily.’

His daughter stared at him.  ‘Will you bring the women and children here?’

‘Those who will come.  Some would rather remain and try to hold what is theirs.’

‘We have food in plenty – stores enough to last ten times our population over a decade or more.’  Her eyes narrowed.  ‘And we have plenty of most things.  Sanitation might be a problem if our numbers grow too rapidly.’

‘Most of the Dúnedain would be happier on the farmlands – and they would not wish to be a burden on us.’

‘There is land,’ Arwen nodded.  ‘And housing – of a sort.  Many have sailed over recent centuries and there is room among us – for their animals, too, if they are able to herd them.’ 

‘I am reluctant to disrupt their lives – but I would wish to preserve them.’

‘Warriors fight better when they know their families are safe – or so my brothers say.’

Elrond smiled.  ‘It is so.’  His gaze lingered on his daughter’s face.  ‘You are very efficient, Arwen.  And wise.’

‘And you, Adar, are very tired.  You have let my brothers and Glorfindel keep you up all night – and you need to take some rest.’

‘Sometimes it is more comforting to sit in good company like this, Undómiel.’  He slipped his arm around her waist and she rested her head against his shoulder.  ‘Aragorn?’ he asked gently.

‘He seeks it still, whatever it might be,’ Arwen murmured.  ‘But he feels he is no closer.’

‘He will find it soon: I am sure of it.’

His daughter laughed.  ‘Foresight – or consolation, Adar?’

‘Both,’ he said firmly. ‘Both.’

***

Haldir shifted uncomfortably as the healers treated his injury, but he pressed his lips together and refused to acknowledge the pain.  It was bad enough that the orc arrow had caught him, without the indignity of letting those about him know he suffered.

‘Take him with the other wounded,’ Celeborn commanded.

The Marchwarden looked at him in mute protest.

‘You are of little use to your brothers until you have had time to heal,’ his lord advised. ‘We have no resources here for cosseting the injured.’ He sighed and rubbed his sweaty hair.  ‘They are coming too often – and in ever greater numbers, as if something drives them forth.’

Harthad clucked his tongue in exasperation.

It was odd, Haldir thought, that, while he was not in the least disconcerted by seeing Celeborn sleek and dangerous in gilded armour, the sight of the sober advisor dressed in warrior’s garb seemed – wrong.  Yet Harthad had been at Dagorlad – and before that in Eregion – and might, for all the Marchwarden knew, have been at Celeborn’s side in the War of Wrath. 

‘I am thankful that the Lady holds them back to the margins of the Wood,’ Harthad said.  ‘Our warriors are too few to fight on so many fronts.’

‘I am thankful that they test us,’ Celeborn said grimly, and Haldir’s eyes flew to him in horror.  ‘Can you imagine how it would be if they all attacked together – against a force that had not been tested in action since the days of Gil-Galad?’

‘The orcs fight like fools,’ Haldir remarked, the elixir he had swallowed enough to loosen his tongue.  ‘They have no thought of defence and charge headlong at their foes.’

‘Enough fools can kill one wise elf,’ Harthad pronounced.  ‘Do not under-estimate a creature that has no fear of death.’

His mouth felt slightly numb and his head seemed larger than it usually was, Haldir noted.  Give him his bow and he could see off a hundred orcs!  If only – if only he could stand up.  His eyes closed involuntarily and he subsided to his stretcher.

‘I would get him well away from here before he rouses,’ Celeborn suggested to the healers’ assistants.  ‘I am sure his displeasure will be expressed at length when he realises that he will spend some weeks recovering.’

The ellon grinned.  ‘As you command, my lord.’

Celeborn nodded his thanks and he and Harthad stepped away from the busy scene.

‘We are well prepared, my lord,’ Harthad said seriously.  ‘I thought Lady Arwen was being overly zealous, but she has seen to it that our warriors will lack for nothing – and that there are those working to replace anything that it lost.’

‘Except for our people.’  The light through the trees painted shadows across Celeborn’s face and made him look tired.  ‘We cannot afford to lose our warriors in these skirmishes, Harthad.   There is an elf today who will not return to his family – I will not preside over another bloodbath.’

His friend rested a hand on his forearm.  ‘You cannot stop them fighting, Celeborn.  This is their home – even more than it is yours.  They have a right to defend it.  That elf – Siriaur – came south along the Anduin at the time of the Great Journey.  He had dwelt under these trees since before Ithil rose – he would not permit them to be defiled.’

Celeborn stared at the forest floor, where small creatures burrowed among the fallen leaves, returning them to the soil to provide for new life, then leaned back his head to catch a glimpse of the brilliant blue between the spreading leaves.  ‘You are right,’ he said helplessly.  ‘But I do not wish to be the bearer of any more bad news.’

‘I have little doubt but that there is worse to come, my lord.’   Harthad shook his head as his lord glared at him accusingly.  ‘And you know it for truth.’

***

The child leaned back, staring at her and sucking at his fingers.  He was – not clean, Arwen thought with resignation, but then who could expect him to be after his journey from his home to these quiet fields close to Imladris’s borders?  At least he smelled mainly of leaf litter and wood smoke – unlike some of his kin, who would be much more welcome after immersion in hot water.  With scented soap.  And preferably, she sighed, having had their clothing burned and replaced.

She smiled easily and offered him a piece of oatcake.  He dropped ridiculously long dark lashes over his eyes and checked for his naneth before taking it and putting it to his mouth. 

More of the Dúnedain than expected had accepted Elrond’s invitation to take sanctuary in Imladris – which only went to show, she feared, that life outside had become far more dangerous than she realised.  There were few men among them – some white-haired ancients, bearing arms she doubted if they could now manage to wield, a few who were missing limbs and a boy or two, adolescents too young even for men to take into battle.  Most of those herding children, trying to control a cow or a goat or two, or carrying the most precious of their possessions, were women.  Weary-looking, faces pinched with anxiety, hair unkempt, in clothes that had not been changed over the course of their journey.  Some among them, too, were armed – and a few even looked as if they knew what to do with the swords at their sides and the bows on their shoulders.

‘They would prefer to remain together, my lady.’  The elf whose family had worked this land before they sailed, leaving him the only one remaining east of the sea, looked at her in some confusion.  ‘They say they will sleep in the barn.’

‘They need time to see that they are in no danger,’ Arwen said compassionately.  ‘They can defend themselves better as a group – and they cannot yet know that here in Imladris they will be as safe as is possible anywhere in Middle Earth.’

The child leaned to one side, offering the half-chewed oatcake to the new elf.

‘Smile at him,’ Arwen recommended as Edebion stepped back.  ‘He likes you.’

‘If it is all the same to you, my lady,’ the young ellon said, ‘I would rather keep my distance.’  He looked doubtfully round the group of Dúnedain.  ‘They are – very strange.’

‘I daresay they think the same of us,’ she answered.  Tall and slender, pale skin glowing, long silken hair braided over pointed ears, the elves helping the Dúnedain move into this corner of the hidden valley moved so quietly that they were on occasion lucky that they were also swift, as Ranger reflexes twitched over knife hilts.  Few among the women and children had seen elves – other than her brothers, that was – and they were clearly less than comfortable in the presence of the dozen or so apparently ethereal creatures around them.

Briefly Arwen tensed.  Would it be like this should Aragorn gain his throne?   She corrected herself determinedly: when Aragorn became king?  Would she spend the rest of her life being looked on with suspicion by those to whom she would seem unearthly and alien?  Would she be forced to remain in silent obscurity: unable to take a full part in the life of those who would be her people, permitted to be no more than the bed-mate of their king and the womb that bore his children?

‘Shall I take him, my lady?’ a shy voice asked.  ‘I hope he is being no trouble.’

Arwen smiled.  ‘You look too young to be his naneth,’ she said, rejecting the thoughts and forcing her worries back into the box in her mind.  It would not be like that.  These people had been displaced from their homes – it was only to be expected that they would be jumpy.  They dealt perfectly well with her brothers, whom they knew.  It would be the same with Aragorn’s people.  In time.  She focused on the present. ‘Who are you?’

The girl blushed.  ‘I am Hannaswen, my lady.  Ecthel is my brother.  I look after him now.’

‘Their naneth died.’  An older woman came up behind them and placed a hand on the girl’s shoulder.  ‘In an orc raid.  And their adar is patrolling the northlands as the Chieftain commands.’

‘You will be safe here.’  Arwen looked from one pair of wary grey eyes to another.  ‘Imladris will be safe unless all falls to the Dark Lord.  And that,’ she said, looking more like her brothers as she tightened her jaw, ‘will never be, if we can do anything to prevent it.’

***

He dared not sleep.  Aragorn placed himself so that any weakness would make sure that the vicious thorns on the encroaching vines would prod him back to wakefulness. 

It had taken years, he thought.  Eight, if he counted them right, since Mithrandir had set him this task – and he had travelled the length and breadth of Middle Earth: from the Anduin to Thranduil’s realm, to Rhovanion and finally to the filth of Mordor in search of this creature.  Alone, for the most part; desperate to remain hidden in places where discovery would lead to his death; seeking the traces of something that was neither man nor goblin, perian nor dwarf – a creeping thing, corrupted in the rotting dark of the Misty Mountains.

He had almost given up – would have given up – had not a brief meeting with the wizard convinced him that he was close.  How Mithrandir had been so sure of that . . . he was not sure he wished to know.  But here he was. . .

The Dead Marshes had been – close to unendurable.  It was one thing to learn, in your bright-eyed boyhood, of the sacrifice of those who had been lost in the fight against evil: to hear of the heroism and gallantry of Elendil and Isildur and Gil-Galad, the reckless courage of Oropher, the endurance of men and elves.  He shuddered.  But it was quite another to pick your way through this graveyard of abandoned hopes.  To see the corpse-lights burning in the night; to scent the stench of decay; to watch, rolling up from the fetid water, the shade of some gleaming elf who should have lived in beauty until the world ended; to feel, on your living flesh, the touch of ghostly fingers; to hear, in imagination at least, the pleas of the dead for release; to taste their despair.

He should not have been surprised, he supposed, to find it here.  Aragorn stared at the twitching creature lying bound on the small dry islet among the deceptive tufts of sharp-edged grass.  Skeletal.  Pallid and cold.  Like some dead thing dragged from its tomb – until it turned its eyes on you.  And then you caught your breath at the anger in it.  The need.  It lived on hunger – and it was lucky that it had avoided being dragged off to end its miserable days in the dungeons beneath Barad-dûr.   He had found it, finally, sniffing its way through the marshes, not sure, it would appear, whether to go forward or back – and it fitted Mithrandir’s description of what he sought.  And there could not, Valar’s mercy, be two such creatures.

It was devious, though – and stronger by a long way than it looked.  Twice, so far, it had made a break for freedom – and the bite on his hand still festered from the last time.  The elven rope subdued it and, for some strange reason, seemed to weaken it, so that even as it fought its contact the creature was more compliant – and Aragorn’s own touch made it cringe as though he was inflicting on it some intolerable cruelty.  It could not bear to travel by day, so it seemed better to rest while Anor sailed the sky – when the creature huddled in any patch of shade, eyes screwed up, whimpering with pain – and remain alert in the dark hours, hauling the scrawny thing northwards in the hope of encountering someone who knew of Mithrandir’s whereabouts.

Failing that – he supposed the Lady was the best option.  Lothlórien was closer than Imladris by far, and risking the Misty Mountains seemed unnecessarily foolhardy when he could leave the creature in the charge of the elves.  Although Mithrandir had suggested Thranduil as a guardian for it – and the Grey Pilgrim usually had his reasons for anything he said, even if he was not prepared to reveal them to those who had to carry out his commands.

Aragorn kept steady eyes on his prisoner as he huddled in the mud of this forsaken place.

So many years, he thought bleakly.  So many years and not one step closer to the goal that drew him on.  He served as best he could, but there seemed little hope of any fulfilment of his dreams.  He should free her.  Free her to seek the happiness she deserved, released from a foolhardy moment of impulsive kindness to one as worthless as he was, free her to sail to the Blessed Realm where she could be who she was supposed to be.

As happened sometimes when his mood was darkest, her spirit washed through him briefly.  Amused devotion and a sting of reproach that he should be so impatient, that he should think to speak for her.  Trust: strength: encouragement.  Assurance that his time would come – and he would hold true.  In the moment between one heartbeat and the next, he felt refreshed – as though he had slept under Imladris’s friendly stars.  One step at a time, he agreed, one step at a time was all it took.

The creature twitched, dragging the fine rope that joined them. 

Dispose of this task, Aragorn decided, and he could spare a few days to spend in the hidden valley before he took up his next responsibility. 

He would take the creature to Thranduil.

***

Cúraniel eyed the Lady warily through her long lashes.  Galadriel doubtless had her reasons for fixing her attention on her granddaughter’s friend, but the elleth would be much more at ease if only she thought she knew the reason behind the Lady’s notice.  Probably, she added privately.  Although it was possible that understanding Galadriel’s motives might be even more alarming.

An unseen smile brightened the Lady’s controlled gleam of power.  The elleth was, after all, right to be suspicious – and it spoke well of her intelligence that she understood that it was her easy association with Arwen that spurred her daernaneth’s desire to get to know her better.  For the Evenstar would not be left alone.  Not if Galadriel Finarfiniel, wife of Celeborn, naneth of Celebrían and bearer of the ring Nenya had anything to say in the matter.  As the Dúnadan’s bride, Arwen would forsake her people, accept mortality and pass from the world – but she did not have to be abandoned by those who loved her.

A princess marrying into a foreign house would have her household.  No-one – no-one – would expect her to endure alone and unprotected far from home.  Galadriel could, without any effort at all, list the names of dozens of these wives of kings who had taken with them handmaidens, scribes, grooms, seneschals, seamstresses – all to give them a haven of familiarity in a stranger’s world.  Of course, she acknowledged, she could also name dozens of wives of kings who had been hated for their strangeness, for their reluctance to adapt, for their foreign looks and ways.  Arwen had more than enough sense to avoid those traps.  And she loved him, this Dúnadan, who understood the ways of elves, who treasured her for her wisdom even more than for her beauty – and who would hear nothing said against her.  No Tarannon Falastur he, to turn against his queen and vilify her name. 

Arwen would take no train of followers to serve her in the Stone City.  Before she quickened with her first child, her people, barring a few obstinate remnants, would be abandoning the homes that had held them for three ages of Anor – and more of the restful dark – and making their way west beyond the sea.  She would be left alone to live in a different world, where all her certainties would be lost.  Her brothers would remain, her daeradar, too – Galadriel tensed at the thought – but it was not the same as having a friend, an equal, an elleth with whom you had shared your youth.

Already there were few enough ellyth remaining.  Those ellyn who suspected what was coming had done their best to convince their wives, their naneths, their daughters, to sail beyond the reach of danger.  Soon. . .   Galadriel observed the elleth at her weaving.  She must ensure that Cúraniel understood what Galadriel wanted of her.  Before she, too, chose to depart – as, one day, the Lady must, whether she would or no. 

Galadriel smiled wryly.  Assuming, of course, that all did not plummet into catastrophic failure.  It was so finely balanced – and disaster lay no more than a breath away.  She pored over her mirror until her head ached, but the shadows passing over it – of fire and ice, darkness and blazing light, sacrifice and selfishness, pride and humility – she could not assemble into any sense.  Her husband curled his lip and recommended that she should stop chasing phantasms, said that they would deal with what came, but she knew that, while he fought with blades and arrows, it was this – her discernment of the unseen that gave them an advantage. 

Cúraniel worked steadily at the small loom.  The loose weave, she found, required more concentration than the grey cloth of which she had made so much, but the fine white linen needed to have the right number of threads if it was to receive the healers’ approval.  At least, she thought, being narrow, it did not take long to make a good length – and times were not yet so bad that she needed to make bandages to the exclusion of all else.  Her next project, she decided, would be to use some of the tightly spun nettle yarn – dyed, for choice, in the softest green – to make cloth for a cool summer gown.  She examined critically the work in front of her.  And she would take the time to embroider bands of twined leaves, studded with a few golden flowers.

‘Walk with me a while, Cúraniel,’ the Lady invited.

The elleth jumped.  She had forgotten, in her planning of the pattern of her as-yet-unmade gown, that the Lady was still present.

‘I would be honoured, my lady,’ she responded politely.  There was no way to avoid so direct a demand.

The smile that greeted her words was incredulous enough to show that Galadriel was well aware that the younger elleth would prefer to be elsewhere, but that she would do as she was asked without question.  Cúraniel flushed slightly.  It was an honour to have the Lady show an interest in you – it was just that those in whom Galadriel invested her time seemed to end up with a bemused look on their faces, doing something that they would normally avoid.

The Lady’s own glade was peaceful beyond the general tranquillity of the Golden Wood.  Even the light seemed to slow down as it descended through the broad leaves that spread protectively over the hidden nook to caress the sparkling water of the pool that trickled from the bowl that was her mirror.

‘How does. . . ?’ Cúraniel blushed and fell silent.

‘Ask,’ Galadriel said pleasantly.  ‘I doubt it is a secret.’

‘How does the water find its way into the bowl?’

‘There is a spring.’  The Lady’s smile was unexpectedly mischievous. ‘Disappointing, is it not?  No secret magic of the Eldar required.’    

Cúraniel eyed the water shrewdly.  Perhaps not, she thought, but then again. . .  She let the thought pass.  It did not matter.  People would always suspect the Lady of the use of power, whether she employed it or not – and the suspicion alone was enough to gain her a reputation as a fearsome opponent.

‘I would ask a favour of you.’

Galadriel carefully avoided looking at the elleth.  She wanted Cúraniel to agree willingly.  A resentful companion forced into remaining through duty would be of no use to Arwen, who would need a friend.

The younger elleth blinked.  What could she offer the Lady of the Wood?

‘You are aware, of course, that my granddaughter has chosen to bind her life with that of Isildur’s heir.’  If any in the Wood knew the details, Galadriel thought ruefully, it would be this elleth.  ‘And that, should matters turn out as all hope, she will leave her people.’  Cúraniel turned to look at her, face blank, but her thoughts racing.  ‘If. . .  When. . . ’  Galadriel closed her eyes and started again.  ‘Whatever happens, I would have you stand by her – as long as she needs you.’

‘I will be happy to do that, my lady.’ 

‘Even if it takes you from your home to dwell among men?’

Cúraniel drew a breath.  ‘Even then, my lady,’ she said steadily.  ‘Lady Arwen is my friend and I would be happy to support her for as long as I am needed.’

Galadriel turned her smile on the elleth.  ‘Good,’ she said.  ‘Good.  And I will see that you are cared for and brought home when the time comes.’ 

A chill drifted over Cúraniel that had nothing to do with the gentle breeze stirring the leaves.  When the time came.   Involuntarily, she shivered.

***

Elladan offered his most winning smile, but let it fade as Mithrandir’s bristling beard clearly displayed his refusal to be impressed.

‘It is a long journey,’ Elrohir said mildly, hiding his enjoyment of his twin’s discomfiture.  ‘And we are in unfriendly times.’

‘Are you suggesting that I need a keeper?’ rumbled the wizard.

‘One does not need the companionship of warriors for their presence to be of benefit,’ Elrohir persisted.  ‘Adar does not need Glorfindel at his back – but he has found it useful on occasion.’

Mithrandir’s steel-grey eyes brooded on the twins, but found – as many had before – that the need to stare down both simultaneously reduced his glare’s effectiveness by a factor of ten.  ‘Minas Tirith is not the right place for either of you,’ he pronounced.  ‘The Steward has too tight a clutch on the practicalities of life in the teeth of war to appreciate the arrival of two creatures from the mythology of a long distant past.’

The twins exchanged a doubtful glance.  ‘I think we have been insulted,’ Elladan declared.  ‘Although I am not quite sure how.’

‘If we are mythological,’ Elrohir pointed out, ‘does not that make you, too, an impossibility in a world of men?’

‘I am too old and shabby to be a myth,’ Mithrandir said firmly.  ‘And too much of an irritation.  Besides, Denethor knows me – and, even if his dislike of me colours his understanding, he is too clever to deny me entrance to his library.’

‘He will have you watched.’

‘Let him.’  Mithrandir’s eyes sparked, like steel under a hammer.  ‘He will find out nothing useful from me.’

‘Why would he expect to be the first?’ Elladan agreed smoothly.

The wizard’s eyes narrowed.  They encouraged their acquaintance to forget it, but these – disturbances – were, after all, the latest products of some very obstreperous lines of elves and men, and power flowed in their veins. 

‘At least let us see you safe through the mountains,’ Elrohir suggested.  ‘And see you on the right road.’

Mithrandir’s eyes took on a depth that made them even more knowing than their indomitable daernaneth’s.  ‘The right road,’ he stressed, ‘is not always the shortest one.’

‘Nor yet,’ Elladan retaliated, ‘the easiest one – but if you wish to get to Minas Tirith and back before the season turns, short and easy help.’

‘And so,’ Elrohir added reflectively, ‘does a good horse.’

‘We will take the High Pass,’ Mithrandir said abruptly, ‘and follow the river south to the Old Ford – whence the sons of Elrond will return home.’

‘And I,’ Elrohir offered, ‘will take your nag, while Eriol bears you swiftly south.’  

The Istar’s eyebrows twitched like caterpillars.  ‘And you would trust me with your horse?’

‘Oh yes,’ the apparently innocent elf said, smiling smoothly.  ‘After all, he knows his own way home – should he need to seek it.’

***

Tired.  Dirty.  Thin.  Some white hairs now among the dark locks.  Straggly beard in dire need of a trim.  Clothes that merited the name merely because they covered his body and kept in some level of warmth.  But his eyes had not changed – and they sought her as a man in a desert seeks water, refreshing themselves in her face.

He dismounted easily, more used to days in the saddle than others were to sitting at a desk, and stilled as their gaze met.  The noisy stable yard, the busy grooms, her brothers – all faded to insignificance as their silence renewed old promises, fed old hunger, salved old injuries.

‘You need to bathe,’ she said when she remembered to breathe again.

‘As my lady commands,’ he replied, his tone as intimate as a kiss.

‘You all need to bathe,’ she wrinkled her nose, extending her attention to include her brothers.

‘And by the time you are suitably attired to enter your adar’s house,’ Glorfindel’s cool voice greeted them, ‘we will have prepared a more suitable welcome.’

Arwen smiled at them and whisked away eager to ensure that the celebration that greeted them would be worthy of the occasion – and provide sufficient opportunity for her to check Aragorn’s health more closely.

‘Mirkwood?’ Glorfindel said quietly, running a hand over the shoulder of Elrohir’s mount.  ‘What took you there?’

‘Not us, my friend,’ Elrohir denied.  ‘Not this time.’

‘Later,’ Aragorn murmured, turning to meet Glorfindel’s warm hug.

‘You have been missed, Estel,’ the commander of Imladris’s guard told him.  ‘And even I have, on occasion, wondered what you were doing that was important enough to keep you so long from these halls.’

‘You have been reproved, my brother.’  Elladan’s irrepressible face appeared over Glorfindel’s shoulder.  ‘If you are sufficiently contrite, the Balrog-slayer might leave it there.’

‘On the other hand,’ Elrohir added, nodding at the groom leading his horse away, ‘he might not.’

‘I would rather only have to go over it once.’  Aragorn addressed his former mentor.  ‘And Adar’s study would be the best place for it.’

Glorfindel held his eyes for a moment and nodded.  ‘When you are ready,’ he said.

‘Where is Adar?’ Elrohir asked, looking towards the house.

‘We have Dúnedain dwelling in the valley,’ Glorfindel reminded him.  ‘And one of their purposes seems to be to test Elrond’s healing ability to the full.  There is a child who seems to be doing his best to exceed his Chieftain’s record of visits to the Halls of Healing.’

‘Dúnedain?’ Aragorn blinked.

‘I will tell you as you bathe.’  Glorfindel took Estel’s arm and his imperious gaze gathered the twins.  ‘The Evenstar is right – you are offensive.  Let us deal with one thing at a time.’

***

She paused behind him, her hand resting lightly on the back of his chair and Elrond had to avert his eyes at the sense of intimacy between them.  Partly, he acknowledged, because the sight reminded him too powerfully of a time when Celebrían’s simple presence had been enough to distract him from the piles of paperwork that littered his desk.  He would have felt much the same, he told himself, whoever had won his daughter’s heart.  He closed his mind to the subject firmly.  This was not the time to brood on what was still only a distant prospect.

‘Did it speak of anything?’ he asked.

‘Nothing coherent,’ Aragorn told him.  ‘As I told Mithrandir – the creature gibbered and moaned, but the only words I could pick out were ‘Baggins’ and ‘Shire’ – and I am not sure that they were not my imagination.’

Elrond’s long fingers tapped the desk as he thought. 

‘The guard on the Shire is strong?’ Glorfindel asked.

‘As strong as it can be.’  Aragorn ran his sun-browned hand over his hair.  ‘We are spread too thinly – so thinly, it would seem, that we can no longer protect our own.’

The Lord of Imladris waved his words away.  ‘We have space enough – in truth, I would prefer it if all your people would seek refuge here.’

‘Those with children have come, Adar,’ Arwen said gently.  ‘And you cannot fault those who remain for wanting to defend what is theirs.’

The rhythmic tapping resumed.  ‘Why Thranduil?’ Elrond asked.  ‘I can see why Mithrandir would want the creature held beyond the reach of the forces of the Dark – but why Thranduil?  Would he not be more secure in, say, Lothlórien?  Or here?  Or even, although it is a long way, with Círdan in the Havens?  Thranduil’s forces are too close to Dol Guldur.’

‘I can see good reasons behind it.’  Glorfindel shook his head at Elrond’s enquiring look.  ‘And little that Mithrandir does is idle, for all we might not understand his choices.’

‘And he is gone to Minas Tirith.’

‘On your horse.’ Glorfindel lifted an eyebrow at Elrohir.

‘Well – you saw what he was riding,’ Elrond’s son grinned.  ‘Although at least it ensured we had a suitable mount for the Dúnadan here when he came down to the Old Ford on one of Mirkwood’s wilder horses.’

‘I was managing him,’ Aragorn declared.

‘Indeed you were, little brother,’ Elladan agreed.  ‘Managing to fall off him, at any rate.’

‘I would have been fine – if only Thranduil’s horsemaster had provided a bridle.’

‘But he did not, Estel.’  Elrohir’s lips twitched.  ‘I got the impression that the Woodland King’s warriors were not too grateful for the – gift – you delivered, and they showed their displeasure as best they could while complying with their king’s commands.’

‘But, of course, it only took the elven touch of Elrohir Elrondion to turn the uncooperative creature to a perfectly trained horse.’ Aragorn snapped.

‘Of course.  My brother is half elf – half horse,’ Elladan teased.

‘What now?’ Glorfindel ignored the byplay, too accustomed to the twins to need to follow their train of thought.

‘I will head west,’ Aragorn said.  ‘Bree and the Shire – to see that all is as well as it can be.’  He closed his eyes.  ‘I must find Halbarad, too, and find out what can be done to strengthen our forces.’

Arwen stilled.  ‘So soon?’ she asked involuntarily.

‘You need to rest, my son,’ Elrond said firmly.  ‘Sleep, food and a fresh horse – it will be a week or two before you are ready to leave.’  His healer’s eye wandered over his foster son.  ‘You have not been looking after yourself very well.’

Aragorn smiled.  ‘As you wish, Adar,’ he said.  ‘A few days should make little difference.’

‘Not at this point,’ Glorfindel agreed.  ‘Although a time comes soon when we will count time in heartbeats and the threads of the past will make the rope from which we will all hang.’

‘Was that foresight or poetic licence?’ Elladan asked cheerfully, averting his eyes from his sister’s face.  ‘Because it sounds to me far too much like Daernaneth to be normal conversation.’

Glorfindel looked at him disdainfully.  ‘I cannot help it if you lack insight, Elrondion.’

Elrond shook his head.  ‘Enough, children!’  He stood up.  ‘We will enjoy Estel’s return and pass a peaceful evening in the Hall of Fire – and then spend tomorrow sharing what we know, what we suspect and what we only fear.  The time to part again will come soon enough without our chasing it.’