Disclaimer: Middle-earth and Tolkien’s characters are his. All else is mine, mine, mine!

Summary: Legolas and Aragorn solve a puzzle that leads them on a search for an ancient sword. They soon learn, however, that finding it was the easy part.

A/N: This story was written for the Teitho Challenge theme: Secrets.

Chapter One

The body of a man lay face down on the ground at the edge of a swift-flowing river. His arms were stretched out over his head, and his feet were embedded in the soft mud.

Moments after the man had taken his last breath, two riders approached from the west. As soon as the body was spotted, they halted their horses.

Aragorn dismounted and walked toward the body so that he could check for signs of life.

"Be careful, Estel," Legolas warned. "It may be a trap."

Sadly, that was a distinct possibility. Middle-earth had become such a dangerous place that even a man lying on the ground, might prove to be a person’s undoing and had to be approached with caution.

Aragorn’s first glance was to the man’s hands. They held no weapon. Reassured that this person was not a threat, the ranger lowered himself to his knees and bent over the body. "He’s dead," Aragorn said after a quick examination, "and he didn’t die very long ago."

That last statement put Legolas, who was still mounted, on an even more heightened alert. It was possible that whoever was responsible, if anyone else was, could still be nearby, ready to pounce on them, too.

Aragorn turned the body over on its back. "There’s no sign of any wounds." The ranger looked out over the swift current he was facing. "This close to the water, my guess is he probably drowned ."

That piece of news managed to relax the elf only slightly, as he continued scanning the area all around them. He didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, nor did he sense any danger. Still, his keen eyes never stopped checking their surroundings.

"His clothes are those of a traveler, but they don’t reveal his place of origin."

"Then we may not be able to inform his family of his passing, though they will surely figure it out eventually." Legolas hoped his words didn’t sound callous. It was not how they were meant.

Aragorn didn’t notice anything wrong with what Legolas had said, concentrating instead on his own thoughts. "Maybe there’s something in his pockets that might give us a clue as to who he was or where he came from."

The stallion Legolas was riding shifted just as the elf looked down once again to scan the muddy bank to see if he had missed anything that might be there. Something metallic flashed in the sunshine and caught his eye.

Legolas dismounted and walked over to a rock that sat a few feet away. When he bent down, he saw a chain of finely-crafted links half buried in the wet soil. When Legolas moved the rock, he was surprised to see a gold pendant resembling a five-pointed star attached to the chain. He picked it up to examine it more closely. In the smooth center was the engraving of a sword. Despite its tiny size, its blade was intricately etched with designs. Turning the star over, Legolas found what, at first, looked like a random pattern of lines, some straight and some curved. He stared hard at the gold piece, trying to decipher the meaning behind the tiny engravings but couldn’t make any sense of them. A longer inspection brought no new insight.

Aragorn had become curious, when he saw that Legolas had been the one to find something that might shed light on who the man had been. He quickly joined his friend. "What have you found?"

Legolas handed the chain and pendant to the ranger to investigate for himself.

Aragorn took the offered object and looked at it. "It’s hard to see all the designs on the sword, but you can tell the real thing must be exquisite, if it even exists, of course. I’ve never seen anything like it." The man looked at Legolas. "I wonder if it does exist or if it’s just an artist’s rendering."

The elf shook his head. "What do you make of those lines on the back?"

Aragorn turned the pendant over and carefully examined the lines Legolas was referring to. They were just as confusing to him as they were to the elf. "I have no idea."

"I cannot say why I feel this way," Legolas said, "but I think it means something. The whole piece is too beautiful and the sword too detailed for the back to be just random lines. They have to mean something."

"I agree." Having said that, Aragorn tried again to make sense of the lines, turning the pendant in all directions in hopes that some recognizable pattern would emerge. However, no solution to the mystery came to him. He handed it back to Legolas, who put it in an inside pocket of his tunic.

"We need to bury this man and then move on," the ranger said.

Their task done, Legolas and Aragorn mounted their horses and rode up toward the ridge above the river. This was one time they wouldn’t have to get wet; they were headed the other way.

*~*~*~*

Legolas and Aragorn reached the top of the ridge a little less than half an hour later.

They stopped momentarily, overlooking the scene below where they had buried the man just outside of the line of trees at the base of the ridge.

Legolas frowned, as he stared downward.

Thinking his friend was sad at the death of the man they had found and the fact that they had no clue as to who he was, Aragorn said, "At least, we were able to give him a decent burial, something he would not have had, had we not come by here when we did."

Legolas didn’t seem to hear the ranger. Instead of answering, he reached inside his tunic and pulled out the pendant and began looking from it to the far horizon and back again several times, turning the piece of gold each time.

Aragorn was going to wait until the elf explained himself, but his curiosity got the best of him. "Have you found something?" he asked, excited at the prospect that the archer actually may have made a discovery.

Legolas handed the pendant to Aragorn. "Look at the lines and then look out there." He swept his hand across all that lay before them.

When he did as he was bidden, Aragorn sucked in a breath. "I don’t believe it." He looked at Legolas in wonder. "The lines match up with everything we can see from here, the turn of the river, the horizon, the forest to the right and the hills behind."

"It is a map," the elf declared simply.

"I think you’re right. The question is: a map that leads to what?"

Not sure but taking a guess, Legolas told Aragorn to turn the pendant back over. Then he pointed to the sword. "See how it points, not straight up or to the side, but at an angle. It is pointing to the northwest, and that is where the sword, which I believe is probably ancient and may well possess special powers, can be found."

Aragorn’s fact lit up. He was once again amazed at the elf’s ability to make such leaps of logic. Most times such logic proved to be accurate. "It’s a treasure map, and the sword is the treasure."

"So it would seem," was Legolas’s only comment. He knew without asking just what his friend was going to say next.

"Care to do a little sword searching?" The grin on the man’s face was unmistakable. Legolas had certainly seen it often enough.

"I have nothing else planned, at the moment."

Aragorn held the pendant up in front of him and then looked out at the hills to the northwest. "Let’s go."

As Aragorn turned his horse to head in the that direction, Legolas reached out and gripped the man’s arm. "Are you not forgetting something?"

Raising both eyebrows in a look that mirrored Lord Elrond’s, he asked, "What?"

"Where do we look? There is no mark on the engraving to indicate the location of the sword."

That was a detail that had totally escaped the ranger’s attention, and he had the good grace to look sheepish at his oversight. His shame lasted all of ten seconds before he looked again at the pendant. Frustrated, he said, "I still see nothing to show where it might be."

After a moment of close scrutiny, Legolas sighed. "I think we go that way," He was pointing to the northeast.

"Now that piece of logic you’ll have to explain to me."

"The sword has to be the key. Looking at it from the front, it points northwest. Turning the pendant around, the sword points northeast. And," he smiled at the ranger, "the point of the sword itself corresponds with the second hill on the map side. See?" He held the gold piece up so Aragorn could satisfy himself that the elf spoke the truth, at least as much as his logic could tell him.

"You are a very bright elf," Aragorn told his friend.

Legolas just laughed and turned his horse to descend the ridge.

*~*~*~*

As the two companions approached the second hill that they had pointed out earlier from the ridge, Legolas groaned. It had become more and more apparent, as they got nearer, that the hiding place for the sword could only be in a cave.

That fact was confirmed when they began walking up the hill and discovered a group of boulders behind several stunted scrub trees.

"That looks promising," Aragorn grinned.

No one would have known the entrance to a tunnel existed there had they been more than a few feet from it.

Aragorn gave his friend a sympathetic look and put his hand on the elf‘s shoulder. "I’m sorry, Legolas."

"I am not surprised. Finding a dead man can only lead to something as disturbing as having to search for something we are not even sure exists and do it inside a cave." He stared at the small opening and sighed. "Tell me that the sword will be found right inside this entrance."

Aragorn hooted in laughter. "You don’t want me to lie to you, do you?" he inquired. Legolas’s wish was just too easy to be true. If he only knew.

Both elf and human crawled into the small opening. Much to Legolas’s relief, he found that the tunnel soon enlarged to the point that he and Aragorn could walk upright with no difficulty.

The meager light from the entrance had long disappeared by the time a blue glow was seen up ahead.

"That’s strange," the ranger commented.

After several minutes, they reached the end of the tunnel. The blue light had become even more intense.

Aragorn moved past the elven warrior and found himself standing in a large opening and looking down into a cavern over a hundred feet across. In the center was a large hole about ten feet wide, and in the center of the hole and rising up at least a dozen feet was a column of flame, blue in color. It was this flame that cast the blue glow in the tunnel and the surrounding cavern.

The two friends stood on a ledge several dozen feet above the cavern floor, which was relatively smooth and level.

Aragorn surveyed the room carefully. There were no people, no fell beasts, no other animals present, only the flame.

"There," Aragorn said, as he pointed to their left at a narrow stairway roughly cut out of the stone wall and still attached to it on one side.

Legolas and Aragorn carefully worked their way down. When they reached the cavern floor, they stood side by side, facing the blue flame that dominated the room.

Legolas took a few steps toward the flame. "Magic resides there." The prince was certain that he was right. In an effort to reassure his friend, he added, "It is a good magic, not of the Dark Lord."

"That's good to hear, Aragorn remarked, greatly relieved.

Suddenly, out of the flame came a feminine voice. "Only he who has the key may approach." The blue color deepened as each word was spoken.

"Key?" Aragorn asked. "What key? And who are you?"

A few seconds went by before the voice came again. "If you do not have the key, you know not what you seek." The ranger’s questions had gone unanswered.

"We seek the sword," Legolas stated, as he boldly walked forward and looked into the depths of the flame before him. He felt no foreboding.

"Legolas," said Aragorn, "we don't know who she is. It could be a trick," the ranger said frankly to his friend. "I don't mean to dispute your idea that the flame is good. It's just that we should proceed with caution."

"I believe she understands who we are," the elf spoke with complete confidence. "Look around, Estel. I do not believe we can find the sword on our own. Someone needs to helps us, and there is no one else here but her."

"Legolas is right." Glendonna used the name she had heard the man call the elf. "I am the only one who can reveal the secret location of the sword you seek." The voice was soft yet powerful.

Trusting in Legolas’s trust, Aragorn walked to the edge of the hole. He was within five feet of the flame towering above him, yet he felt no heat. He stared hard, trying to find some hint of a face or a form in its depths. There was nothing but the swirling blue flame and the bright sparkles twinkling all through it.

"Who are you?" the man asked again. This time he was rewarded with an answer.

"I am Glendonna of Deädralon," the voice replied.

Aragorn turned and looked at Legolas, who only shrugged. "I do not know it," he told the man, as he, too, studied the flame. "It is no realm that I have ever heard of."

He directed a question to the mysterious woman. "Are you Firstborn?"

"Yes, but you would not have heard of me or my home. Morgoth saw to that. The entire realm of Deädralon was wiped from Middle-earth and from all memory, not long before Morgoth was banished.

"That Dark Lord chose not to destroy my whole family, so he sent my spirit here and imprisoned me in this flame. As an added cruelty, he made sure my father knew that I would be trapped here for all of Ilúvatar‘s Song. He also made sure that I would be aware of all the events in the world outside this cavern but would never be able to participate in any of it."

"You've been here for many millennia," Aragorn said. "I can't imagine being trapped in this cavern for that length of time. It is like a tomb."

"Will you tell us of the sword?" Legolas asked.

"It is the Sword of Deädralon, forged by my great-grandsire. It became the symbol of our realm, whose inhabitants fought the Dark Lord - and lost." The sadness in Glendonna’s voice was unmistakable.

The flame continued to swirl and sparkle. It was almost hypnotic to the ranger. He shook himself free of his near trance before saying, "The sword is here in this cavern." He felt sure he was right.

"Yes," Glendonna confirmed. "But I cannot open the vault that contains it. Only the key can do that."

"You mentioned a key before. What key?" Aragorn asked again.

And again Glendonna did not answer the question but asked one of her own. "Without the key, how did you find this place?"

Glendonna was suggesting that it was the key that pointed the way to this location. Then the answer suddenly dawned on Legolas. He smiled and then pulled the pendant from his pocket and held it up toward the flame and the woman’s spirit within it.

A light tinkle of laughter burst forth. "So you do have the key. I see it is on a chain. What a clever disguise to make it appear to be a simple necklace."

Still needing answers, Aragorn asked, "Where did the pendant - or rather, the key - come from?"

"My father had it fashioned when the war against Morgoth began going badly. He anticipated what destruction Morgoth might wrought, and he hoped that someday the sword would be found and Deädralon’s existence and its fate would be known in the world. He had no idea, of course, that I would be cursed as its guardian. The realm died fighting evil. People should know that," Glendonna declared emphatically.

"Yes, they should," Legolas and Aragorn said in unison.

The archer and the ranger looked at each other and grinned, both thinking that the dead man must have known what he had in his possession. He may even have been on his way to search for the sword when he encountered the river.

"Since you have the key, you will be able to recover the sword." Glendonna’s heart was gladdened that these people, who she discerned were good, had shown up to claim the ancient blade.

"Come closer," she told Legolas. "Reach out and put the key into my flame."

The elf moved a step nearer to the hole. He held the pendant in front of him and then reached out until the flame surrounded his hand. His skin tingled, but the feeling was not unpleasant. The golden metal began to glow until it became so brilliant it was almost too bright to look at.

The wood-elf felt a tug, and the pendant pulled free of his hand and floated in Glendonna's flame. Slowly, it rose until it cleared the top of the flame, and then it flew straight up toward the ceiling another twenty feet above.

As the pendant neared the top of the cavern, a depression in the rock was revealed. Legolas had no doubt that its size and shape would perfectly match that of the pendant.

He was proven right, when the stare-shaped pendant settled easily into the depression and began to spin, first slowly and then faster and faster. A small stone panel opened, and a golden beam came down to touch the top of the blue flame. All through the beam were the same sparkles that Glendonna's flame contained.

Soon the intense anticipation of elf and man was rewarded when the Sword of Deädralon came floating down the beam. It finally came to rest in the same spot where Legolas had first released the pendant into the flame.

"Take it, Legolas. It is yours."

The elf was awed by such an honor.

TBC