The Price of Freedom

By Erin Lasgalen

FORWARD AND WARNINGS: R for content. This story is an AU.  With the exception of the first chapter it is set post-ROTK.  It will contain heavy violence, the mention of rape though no actual depictions. and sexual content—again, no gory details. DISCLAIMER: This story was written solely for the purpose of non-profit entertainment.  All canon characters and places therein are the property of Tolkien Estates and New Line Cinema. 

Chapter III---The Nest of the Hunters

     She could not clear her head.  It was filled with the sense of rushing wind and the darkly pleasant tingle of a dozen new sensations she had no name for.  Every inch of her seemed to be humming with current, as though she had gripped a small lightning bolt by the tail.   Everywhere was the sound of great obsidian wings.   The sense of living flight, of speed and weightless motion, enveloped her in a feeling of wonder she had not known since the first time she rode a horse at full gallop.

     She opened her eyes to see a cavern, a god-sized tunnel that stretched out beneath and before her, a glittering cathedral of diamond-studded walls reflected upon the rolling, black waters of the underground river below.  She should not have been able to see anything in this lightless place.

     “Beautiful,” she whispered dreamily.

     “Aye,” Morsul agreed softly.  He smiled down at her, stroking her face with one hand so that she shivered at the cold touch.  She closed her eyes and wandered for a time in a dark, formless daze.  Consciousness and all sense of time fled.

     She woke again for a short time to grinding nausea and the sound of screams, deep-throated, angry howls of pain interspersed with Dwarvish and Westron curses.  Dimly, as though from far in the distance, she heard Legolas’ voice, hoarse with pleading.

     “Leave him be!  Curse you all to houseless damnation, let him alone!  Let him alone, I beg you!”

     And Gimli, rising in a strident shout above the cacophony of demonic cackles, “I will tear you pack of slimy leeches limb from limb!  Come again, you dung-eating cowards!”

     “No!” She sobbed softly.  She felt so confused.  She could not remember ever being so very afraid, though she could not longer remember exactly what it was she feared.  It seemed that someone was hurt and in danger, but she could not fight her way up through the deep waters of her slumber to help them.

     “Hush now, my golden daughter,” a man’s sweet, musical voice soothed.  Strong arms held her, rocking her as though she were very small.  He began to sing, a baritone so beautiful her heart wept at the sound, and she forgot about the horrible noises around her.  She slept again and dreamed of her father.  In her dream, his face was fair and beardless and his long hair was like a silken river of night. And somewhere in the dark, sweet notes of his lullaby, all memory, even her own name, slipped away from her.

     She woke again after a space of time and lay for a while, stretching in drowsy languor, feeling as though her skin was drawn too tight around her body.  After a while, she rolled onto her stomach and slowly rose to all fours, surveying her surroundings with great interest.

     She was in a dome-shaped chamber into which one might have comfortably placed a large city with room to spare.  High, high above, finger’s width shafts of light streamed through fissures in the stone ceiling, streaking the cave with spears of light.  They crisscrossed one another like luminous spider webs.   She squinted upward, lost in the beauty of the play of light and shadow above her, until her eyes could bear it no more.  The light hurt her eyes as though she had wandered in darkness for many days.
She sat up, balanced on her haunches, and ran her hands through her hair, reveling in nothing more than the pleasant sensation of her fingers threading through the tangles there, humming softly to herself.  The currents of the cavern breathed cool air against her face and she gasped, shivering with delight as the little breeze caressed her face.  Every sense was magnified tenfold, every nerve ending vibrated with pleasure at the simplest stimulus. There was no memory of anything before her waking to trouble her mind, only the now.  Only the sensation of the moment.  She sat for a long time in a wash of blissful peace, lost in the wonder of the swirls of luminous dust dancing in the light above and the little eddies of air that drifted about her.

     The monolithic chamber was deserted.  Nothing, not so much as a flea or a spider, dwelt herein.  She cast about, feeling suddenly very lonesome, seeking with sight that owed no homage to her eyes.  There!  She found something, a flicker of heat.  It was a sweet, brightly burning spark of life, glowing in the darkness like a lighthouse flame.  She began crawling toward its source, wondering vaguely where she was and how she had come to be here.  Perhaps it did not really matter.  She closed her eyes, feeling great height and the blazing expanse of the burning blue sky above the stone tower about her.  She was high in the hollow of some great mountaintop.  Outside, it was broad, brilliant day.

     She moved along one side of the cavern room, making her way patiently on hands and knees toward the solitary beacon of life.  She passed through another chink in the cave wall.  It was not big enough to fit her arm through, but as she passed through the column of light, she hissed with pain as the sun’s scalding rays touched her.

     Finally, she found what she sought.  The living thing lay eagle-spread, shackled to metal stakes driven into the stone by powerful hands.  She stared at it for a moment, frowning in perplexity.  It was speaking to her, but the words were only musical noise, making no sense.  She knew this live thing, she was sure.  It was fair to look upon and the sight of it conjured feelings of sweet warmth and comfort.  She sat, her frown deepening as the sweet strains of its voice grew more agitated.  She decided she did not like to see it chained.  She pulled at the stake beside the living one’s arm, but she could not tear it from the stone.  So, she broke the chains instead.  The metal links tore in her hands as though they were made of thin, rotted leather.

     She watched as it---no, he---sat up, feeling inordinately pleased with herself.  He touched her face and seemed to sag with relief.  She leaned her cheek into the palm of his hand, enjoying the warm, smooth softness of his skin.

     “You are alive!” He said hoarsely.  “You still breathe. I feared---“ He stopped speaking when she reached out and touched his hair.

     She smiled in delight.  It was softer than hers.  The feel of it between her fingers was so pleasing she sank her other hand into the disarray of golden strands, marveling at its beauty, how it caught the dim light and shone.  She trailed fingers down to the cut of his jaw where the soft fall of gold ended and inhaled sharply at the silken feel of the skin on his face.  Her other hand wandered down to the nape of his neck.  She leaned forward, running her hands down the smooth, hard plane of his chest, arching her back as the cut of her breeches seemed suddenly too tight through the straddle.  He smelled like a forest in high summer, green and alive. She moved closer, feeling a sweet surge of desire to touch every part of him.

     He gripped her shoulders and shook her hard.  “Eowyn!  Eowyn!!” His shout hurt her ears.  He shook his head in despair, his beautiful gray eyes like stormy skies, ready to rain with sorrow.  “Eowyn---!”

     And finally, the sound of her name found a purchase in her mind.  Memory flooded back with the brutal force of a hammer blow.

     “Legolas!” She gasped.

     Oh gods!  Oh, Lady of Light!  She remembered.  She remembered everything!

     He made a soft noise of relief and pulled her forward into a crushing embrace, dizzying her as she was suddenly inundated with a rush of too many sensations to put names to.  But she held on, moaning softly as the full horror of their plight struck her.  For a long moment, they clung together like two lost children.

     “I thought he had broken your mind when he---“ He shuddered against her. “---when he forced his blood upon you!” He drew back a bit, meeting her eyes.  “It is not hopeless!” He said fiercely.  “It is broad day outside.  They have held us two days in this place.  Few of them are strong enough to brave this ‘temple’, or so they call it, until sunset.  They chained me here more than a day ago.  For all of the first day and night, Morsul carried you about as though you were a babe in arms, keeping the others from---from feeding upon you.”

     She felt suddenly ill, seeing that his tunic was gone, his boots missing.  The whole of his bare chest and neck was dotted with bruises and jagged little cuts. 

     “And you?” She asked.  “Did they---?”

     He shook his head.  “They did not give me to drink nor did they feed.  Though they tried. When the sun set on the first night, the other members of the Hunter’s High Court nearly went mad with bloodlust.  It has been millennia since any of them had Elvish blood.  They fell upon me like rabid dogs, and would have torn me to pieces had Morsul not beat them away, threatening them with their Mistress’ displeasure.  Their Queen was wounded, it seems, during the battle at the South Pass.  They are all waiting for her to arise from her stupor.  Morsul gloated that they were saving me for her when she wakes.  An ‘Elvish healing draught’, he said.  He finally lay you where you woke, after making it clear to the others that they would suffer his wrath if they mauled you.  You have not woken or stirred these two days, and I feared you were dead.  Or worse.”

     “Gimli?” She asked softly, and watched his fair face crumble with horror and grief.

     “They tore him down like wolves ringing a stag,” Legolas almost sobbed.  “They set upon him while I was held down and made to watch.  They---“  he choked on the words.  “I will not lose hope!  They did not kill him!  Morsul stopped their game just short if Gimli’s death.  But they drug him away and I have not seen him in a day.  Eowyn, we will find him and leave this place.  They cannot follow us into daylight!”

     She stared back at him in numb sorrow, swallowing the carrion taste of Morsul’s blood that still clung to her tongue.  “Find Gimli,” she told him, “and leave.”

     “You---“ He began.

     “Legolas,” she said gently.  “I still live.  But I cannot follow you and Gimli into the Sun.  Its touch burns me.  Daylight is lost to me now.”

     He stared back in uncomprehending shock for a moment. Then he said, “No.”

     “Morsul forced his blood down my throat,” she said with soft brutality.  “This cavern hall is dark as a tomb but to my eyes it seems bright as day.  I am befouled.  I am changing into---“

     “No!” He said again, louder this time, his face hardening with stubborn refusal.

     “If you want to save me,” she said, “you can help me take my own life--“

     “NO!” he shouted into her face.  With her new heightened senses, it sounded like a crack of thunder in her ears.  “You will live!  I will not allow you to give up on your life or hope while there is breath left in your body, you foolish girl!”  He climbed to his feet, pulling her with him.  “You will come with Gimli and myself into the light of day,” he told her.  His voice was neither gentle nor open to compromise.  It was that of a crown prince who would not suffer her defiance.  “You will not turn your hand upon your own life.  If you are indeed past all hope, the Sun will kill you quickly.  If not, we shall all escape together!”  His face gentled and he lay each hand on either side of her face.  “Either way, you shall be free of them.”

     “I will live,” she agreed, trying to keep her voice steady.  It sounded thready, shaky as an old woman’s.

     She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, listening, searching for another living thing within the scope of her new perception.  So strange.
It was neither sight nor smell nor hearing, but was kin, in ways, to all three.
It was not a human ability. And on the heels of that thought came another realization.  She reached down and took his wrist in her hand.  She gripped the metal and tore the thick led manacle in two halves with a little grunt of effort.  She stared down at the torn metal in grim satisfaction.  When she turned her eyes upward, Legolas was watching her with a veiled, curiously blank expression.  But she could feel the terrible fear, fear for her, radiating off him like cold air.

     “Morsul,” she told him fiercely, “shall be very, very sorry he gave me this added strength when I turn it against him and his brethren.”

     Legolas nodded slowly in agreement, still uneasy, but the glowing flame of his spirit brightened noticeably, shot through with affection and stunned admiration.

     “You are one of the bravest souls I have known,” he said aloud.  “If we are meant to die here this day, I want you to know that.  And that I would have liked to have known you better.  I think I could have loved you as dearly as I love Gimli and Aragorn had we had more time---“

     She lay her hand over his lips, stopping the words, her eyes burning, her chest suddenly tight with emotion.  “We shall not say ‘if’ or ‘might have been’.  As you said, we shall all escape together!”

     He nodded obediently, a ripple of distant amusement swirling through the light of his presence.  Was this how Elves saw others and the world around them?  She wondered if this sight was part of the Hunter’s taint, or if it were some lingering vestige of Elvishness Morsul had accidentally imparted to her with his blood.  There was no time to puzzle it out now.

     She focused, seeking as far as her new sight could extend itself, finding what she sought.  “Gimli is in that direction,” she said, pointing across the dark sepulchrous room.  “He is alive.  More than that I cannot tell.”

     They made their way slowly, every nerve on edge for fear of alerting what slept beneath their feet.  She could feel them, slumbering, lost in dark dreams of blood and slaughter, deep in the belly of the mountain.  They were---Merciful Eru, they were legion! More than she ever imagined possible.

     They reached the end of the temple chamber and stopped at the open arch of a crude, ragged door that led downward into darkness.  Blood smell overwhelmed her, filling her head with its rich, red smell.  She very nearly retched when she realized that, for an instant, it had seemed as savory a scent as rare beef on the spit. 

     “This has the feel of a trap,” she said.

     “It is a trap,” he agreed.  “That is why they separated us, knowing if you woke and freed me while they slept, we would not leave without seeking Gimli first.”

     “It stinks of fresh blood,” she said.

     “While you slept,” he murmured softly, “they brought up Men from a----a holding pen they keep somewhere in the deep.  Prisoners they took at the South Pass, I am sure.  They took all night killing them, chasing them from one end of the temple room to the other, until the bravest among them wept like terrified children.  They tossed the bodies down here when they were done.”  He face grew hard, his entire being emanating submerged wrath.  “They tossed Gimli down here when they finished with him.”

     “Let us find him,” she said with answering cold rage.  Oh, Lady of Light, what she would do to Morsul when they met again!

     They picked their way down the rough stair, stepping over bodies in varying states of decay.  At one point in their descent, her eyes caught the glitter of steel and she bent and pulled a scimitar and long curved dagger from the rigorous hand of one of the dead.  Uttering a soft prayer for lost souls, Legolas did the same.  After the first twenty paces, the steps vanished and they half-stumbled, half-slid down the slick, gory slope of the tunnel to the chamber below. 

     It was less than half the size of the temple room above, but it was still enormous.  It was a city of bones and rotting meat, both animal and human.
They were in the Hunter’s haint.  Their feeding ground.

     “This is a dead end,” he said from directly behind her.  “There is only this one way, in or out.”  He exhaled slowly, his breath upon the back of her neck sending a tremor of disconcerting tightness through the lower half of her body.  Elbereth!  What was wrong with her?!

    Mercifully, Legolas did not seem to notice.  Every hair on her body stood on end with sudden alert.  Something was stirring, shifting and muttering in its sleep far below.  But as yet, she could only feel the solitary candle of Gimli’s presence.  The Hunters were not here nor anywhere close by. 

     “They are not near,” she told him.  He did not question her.  She led the way, skirting the bright shafts of light from the little notches in the walls.  There were dozens of fissures in the stone on the left side of this chamber.  They bled light inward like radiant leaks in a foundering ship.  They were---she paused, searching for her bearings---they must be on the western face of the Crags. 

     They climbed over the little mountains of bones, homing to the wheezing, pain-filled gasps that were the only sound in the deathly stillness around them.  The Dwarf lay on his back, half-conscious, his breath labored as though the simple act of drawing breath were almost too much for him.
He was a bleeding mass of small wounds.

     She caught Legolas’ arm when he uttered a low cry and would have run to the Dwarf’s side.  “He is not himself,” she said.  She peered down at the Dwarf with mounting fear, fear for him and fear for herself and Legolas.

     “He thirsts,” she whispered.  “He has no memory or thought beyond this moment.  There is only his thirst and the need to satisfy it. He is---“ She turned to the Elf with a sudden flash of insight.  “He is in the same state I was in when I woke!  They must have given him to drink at some point, but they also drained him to the threshold of death.  That is how they change a living soul into one of their own.  That is why I did not attack you when I woke.  I am polluted with their foulness but I do not thirst because they never fed from me!”

     He nodded slowly, edging cautiously forward.  “Stay back,” he told her.  “He will hearken to my voice better. We must bring him back to himself as I brought you back. When he remembers his own name, he will be as you are now, and we---“

     A low, rumbling animal snarl rolled out of Gimli’s barrel chest.  It was the growl of a rabid, starved dog.  It was difficult to believe the noise had come from the Dwarf’s throat.

     “Gimli!” Legolas did not flinch at the terrible noise his friend was emitting.  “Gimli son of Gloin, hear me!”  He repeated the Dwarf’s name again, as he had with Eowyn, trying to jar him back to cognizance.  “Gimli, it is Legolas!”

     Gimli sprang.  He rushed forward in a nightmare blur of impossible speed.  Legolas leapt to one side with a kind of whip-crack speed she had not imagined he possessed.  But then, she had never actually seen the Elf fight.

     The Dwarf rounded, plowing through the damp clutter of moldering bone, stalking his friend as a bear would stalk a deer.  Again and again he charged, lumbering toward Legolas with unnatural speed, but still wanting for any sort of agility.  Legolas dodged here and there, still calling Gimli’s name.  Strangely, the Elf did not seem afraid in the least, as though he believed implicitly that his friend would never harm him, even in this extreme.

     Eowyn had no such faith.  And worse, she felt another stir of awareness from below, stronger this time, a flickering, drowsy curiosity.  Oh, sweet Eru!

     “Legolas!” She cried.  “Our time grows short!  In another few moments, they will be upon us!  Knock him senseless and we will carry him if we must!”

     Legolas stopped moving, standing his ground as Gimli bore down upon him once more.  He knelt in one swift, fluid motion.  “I am sorry for this, Elvellon!”  He punched the on-coming Dwarf square in the jaw, rising as he did so, using the added force to strengthen the blow.  Gimli all but flew backwards, landing on his backside with a loud crash of snapping rotted bones.  They watched as the Dwarf gingerly rubbed his chin.  The bristling scrape of his beard was the only sound in the sudden silence.  Then he raised his head and met their eyes with with blessed, pain-filled lucidity.

     “Fool of an Elf!” Gimli muttered painfully.  “You nearly broke my jaw!”

     Legolas released a short bark of laughter that was more than half a sob.
“Hard-headed Dwarf!” he said.  “Your jaw nearly broke my hand!”

     There was no time for a warning.  There was no time to cry out.  One instant, she felt a burst of sudden awareness, saw slitted golden eyes in her mind’s eye opening wide with surprise and anger.  A heartbeat later, the floor erupted in a shower of bone shards and carrion as the Hunters leapt upward from their resting place, winging up through the tunnels below with lightning speed.  The largest of the bone heaps had covered a pit that led down to the main Nest. 

     There was no fight.  They were too many and too fast.  She had been a fool to think that she could best them in combat, even now.  Even with Morsul’s blood churning in her veins, the best she could do was track their movement with her eyes.  In an instant, she hung suspended in the air, crushed in the grip and a winged horror, her sword gone, her knife taken from her.  And with it, all her hope.  Its horribly distended mouth leered open, descending upon her defenseless throat.

     It shrieked with pain as something slashed it in half at the belly.  It fell from the air and she fell with it, landing in a gore-splattered tangle.  Morsul jerked the top half of the beast’s carcass off her, gazing around at the circle of other Hunters, hissing with rage.

     “Let all of you who might be tempted to sample my daughter before she is fully changed remember this!” He told them coldly.  They shrank back from his wrath, cringing down to the floor in obeisance. 

     She tried to scramble to her feet, looking around wildly for Legolas and Gimli.  They were each held in the clawed hands of fully transformed Hunters.  Eowyn had the sudden mad thought that if Fallah were here she would be jotting down notes regarding the qualities of their man-shaped form versus the giant, bat-winged, hook-clawed forms.  They seemed to flow like muddy water over clay from one form to the next, depending on their mood or their needs at a given moment.  She watched in mesmerized fear as the others shifted slowly into man-shape.  There were perhaps a hundred of them.  They were Men, all of them, with the single exception of Morsul.  Some were clothed in mismatched rags, pilfered him the dead, no doubt.  One or two were wearing the armor of Harad, though it looked antique.  Ancient.  Many of them wore nothing at all. 

     He reached down and jerked her to her feet, surveying her for any sign of injury.  At the first touch of his hands she cried out.  She could feel him pressing against her will, bidding her be still, commanding her to let him in, to open her mind.  She pushed back, eye to eye with him, hurling him back from the barred gates of her mind again and again.  It was easier than it had been that first terrifying time he had tried to usurp her will.  Finally, he growled in frustration, only to laugh appreciatively a moment later.

    “Ah, well,” he said fondly.  “What use have I for a weak, mindless woman anyway.” 
    
     He pulled her forward, pinning both arms to her sides, and kissed her full on the lips, while she screamed with rage against his mouth.  There was no blood in his mouth this time, only the sickened sense of defeat, that he had once again done with her as he pleased.  There was only the rage that, again, she was not strong enough to stop him. 

     Legolas and Gimli were both shouting in anger.  Gimli’s seemed to have lost most of his Westron in his anger and lapsed into a spate of Dwarvish obscenities.  Morsul broke the vile embrace when Legolas said something in Elvish, something that made the dark Elf snarl with anger. 

     “Oh, I will put more than my ‘rotting dead hands’ on her, boy!” Morsul rasped. “I will have her in every way imaginable!  She will be my firstborn, my child and my consort for all of time!” 

      He set her aside, into the waiting arms of a Hunter wearing the arcane armor of a Khand tribesman.  The dark Elf stalked forward, his fair face twisted with gleeful malice.  Slowly, with deliberate cruelty, he drew one long, sharp nail down Legolas’ chest, leaving a bloody trail behind him.  The other Hunters hummed with blood lust, smacking their lips as the scent of Legolas’ blood filled the room.

     Legolas held Morsul’s eyes without flinching, not reacting to the wound outwardly, though she could see the pain.  It tinted his spirit with a red-rimmed blur. 

     Morsul smiled slowly.  “Let loose the Dwarf,” he commanded.  “He had remembered himself, but that will make this all the more entertaining.  We shall while away the time until sunset with a game.  We shall see how long it takes the naugrim to lose control and feed upon his dear friend.”

     He strolled back with unhurried grace and took her from the Hunter who held her, as the others released Gimli and thrust him forward to where Legolas stood pinned between two towering beasts. 

     Gimli stood a moment, head lowered, and launched himself at the nearest of them, shouting with anger.  They formed a circle, jeering with laughter.  One of them tossed him an axe.  Its handle was pocked with age but the blade was still bright.  He raised it in both hands, smiling with grim pleasure.

     “You will be sorry for that, you leeching slugs!”  

     They hooted with laughter right up until the instant he shot to one side with blinding speed and cut one of their number into two neat halves.

     “Do not slay him!”  Morsul called in warning when they would have rushed him as one.  “If you will set dangerous rules do not complain when the game goes awry.”  He turned back to her, drawing her into his arms while she kicked and clawed.  He did notice her struggles.  He held her, and without preamble, tilted her head to one side and drove his teeth into the juncture of her neck and shoulder with a snarl of hunger.  He drank long and deep while she hung in his arms, lost in a daze of pain and shock.  All the while he battened upon her mind fruitlessly, like a siege engine made of clay, never breaching the barrier of her soul.  As consciousness began to recede, she found herself saying a prayer of thanks that he had not done so. She was somehow sure that if he had penetrated her mind’s defenses she would have felt nothing but pleasure from his bite.  Without the weight of his will over-bearing hers, it was like being mauled by a wild dog.  And to her mind, that was infinitely preferable.

     Without warning, just as she felt her last tie to the consciousness begin to slip away, he stiffened against her, gasping like a man shot through the chest.  He drew back, his pale face an inch from hers, a mask of surprise and dawning horror. 
    
     “What---?” He breathed.  “What have you done?”  He sank to his knees, shuddering, still holding her close.  Eowyn turned her head away painfully, trying to see Gimli and Legolas.
    
     The Hunters had taken Gimlis weapon after losing another of their band to the axe they had given him.  One of them, a man with the features and gray eyes of the sons of Numenor, passed a hand over Legolas’ wounded chest and was smearing the blood over Gimli’s lips.  Even from where she stood, Eowyn could smell the heady aroma, and when she realized her own mouth was watering she fought back a scream.

     “No!” She wormed one arm out of the iron cage of Morsul’s embrace.  She balled up her fist and drove it into his cheek with all her might.  The blow did not phase him.  He seemed distracted, almost dazed.

     “Do not do this!” She spat.  “Kill us all for your amusement, but do not do this to them!”

     “What have you done to me?!” Morsul asked hoarsely, as though he had not heard her words.  “It hurts!  Oh, Eru, let me not remember!  It hurts!”

     Gimli was shuddering, standing rooted in place.  His hand was over his mouth to block out the blood scent.  His face was a rictus mask of agony and he was weeping openly now, muttering under his breath.  “I shall not!  I shall not!”

     Legolas still hung between two of the Hunters, shouting curses in Elvish at Morsul, at all of them, that she was sure would have blistered her ears had she been able to understand any of what he said.

     Gimli bolted and tried to run, desperate to put some distance between him and his friend, but the others caught him.  They tossed him back into the ring they had formed about the Hunters who held Legolas, shrieking with cruel laughter.

     “Please,” she said, forcing the word through clenched teeth.  He had called her his daughter, his consort.  Whatever strange obsession he had formed for her, if it would sway him in any way she would use it.

     Morsul’s eyes glowed with sudden hope, and he seemed to recover himself a bit.  He pulled her close, his corpse-cold body pressed down the length of hers, shivering with eagerness.  “Say it again, sweet one.”  He hooked one hand around the back of her neck and drew her even closer, his stinking breath against her lips.

     “Please,” she whispered.  All her pride and defiance had flown with the sound of Gimli’s hoarse sobs of despair.  He was losing his battle with the poisoning madness they had set in his veins.  “Please do not force one of them to kill the other!”

     He kissed her again, slowly, savoring her mouth.  “And what will you give me if I end this game?”

     She began to shake all over, panic tearing around inside her gut like a wild animal.  “I---I---“ She could not speak for fear of what she knew he would ask.  Her courage shattered like fragile glass and each broken fragment reflected a nightmare image of Grima Wormtongue’s face.

     Morsul’s pale face froze, his golden cat eyes widening slowly in surprise.
“Nay, love.”  He smiled without humor, without any of his customary mockery.  She had the strange feeling she was seeing a shadow of the Elf he had once been.  “I am not so far fallen, even now, that I would force myself upon you.”  He smiled again, and a touch of his old black laughter returned in his voice.  “And when you are fully changed, you except my embraces with joy.”

     “If I were fully changed, I would kill you,” she said tightly, though she was still fighting not to swoon with weakness and bloodloss.  “Living or dead, I will not rest until I have avenged Indassa and Fallah.”  She studied him coldly, trying to keep from trembling against him like a snared rabbit.  “What is your price?”

     “You must open your mind to me,” he said, his yellow eyes darkening with a kind of terrible desire.  He ran his tongue slowly across his lips. “Open that barred gateway in your soul while I drink.”

     “How,” she asked harshly, “is that any less loathsome than forcing me into your bed?!”  She saw him flinch almost imperceptibly at the icy blast of sickened hate she hurled at him.  He must be able to sense emotions in the same way she now could.

     She did not see it happen.  She heard a cry, a soul-piercing cry of agony, from Gimli.  And a great crash of breaking stone.  Light flooded in through a smashed hole in the chamber wall where an arm-sized fissure had been a moment before.  The Hunters scattered and she hissed with pain as the light struck her full in the face, blinding her for a moment.  Morsul drug her back into the safety of darkness, staring at the gaping gash in the stone face of the cave room’s eastern wall in amazement. 

     Legolas had stopped shouting.  He had scrambled free of his captors as they ran for cover of darkness.  And now he was killing them.  He had  found a pair of blades from the wealth of weaponry scattered across the floor and now he moved like the hand of Mandos among them.  In their confusion and momentary blindness, he tore through them with the graceful, utilitarian precision of a merciless, stone-cold killer.  His face was blank, utterly devoid of expression, but he radiated a madness of rage and grief that left her breathless.  She had known he was a warrior of renown, had heard tales of his speed and prowess in battle, but nothing that spake any justice to the truth.

     They rallied, recovering their sight all too quickly, dozens of them converging on him as a pack.  And even so, they approached with caution.
It took another five minutes and another half dozen of their number dead to pull him down again and club him unconscious.

     “Stupid, stinking, mud-eating naugrim!”  Morsul howled with fury.  He drug her forward, hanging just out of the light, staring at the jagged hole in the wall was the face of the mountain’s eastern cliffside.

     Eowyn finally understood.  Gimli had lost control, had lost his last shred of resistance to the madness of bloodlust.  So, he had escaped their game in the only way he could.  He had hurled himself at the wall face, using the added strength they had given him.  He had broken the stone that led to daylight and plummeted down the sheer face of the mountainside.  He had jumped to his death rather than feed upon his friend.

     “We are all for it now when the Mistress awakens,” one of the other Hunters said in a fearful voice.

     Eowyn hung her head, too numb for grief, hoping against hope for a swift death when the Queen of the Hunters awoke.  Morsul caught her body before she sagged to the floor. 

     But death did not come.     

     She dreamt of battle, of killing and red mayhem.  She dimly remembered drinking from a flowing font of sweet, rich, red wine, and Morsul’s voice speaking gently to her.  “Grow strong, my daughter!  I shall not lose you!  I shall not!”

     Day bled away to cool soothing darkness and Eowyn woke again to find herself in the Temple Chamber.  She woke with a snap, to the sounds of jeering caws and shrieks of pain.

     Warm, strong arms enfolded her, as sweet and warm as Morsul’s foul embrace was cold.  She lay in Legolas’ arms, the upper half of her body across his lap.   She stared up into his bleak hard face.  The expression looked so wrong on his features.  He burned like a torch of blazing rage and fathomless sorrow in her mind.  She searched her own heart for answering grief, but she found she could feel nothing at the moment but seething hatred for the ones who had driven Gimli to his death.

     The Temple Hall was full.  Its monolithic expanse was crowded to capacity with hundreds of Hunters.  No.  There were thousands.  And they were all shouting, cackling in mad vicious glee over some terrible bit of merriment that she could not see.  The only mercy was that, aside from Legolas and herself, she could feel no other living soul about them.  Whatever horrific thing they were doing, at least the Hunters were doing it to one of their own.

     “Their Queen has risen,” Legolas told her tonelessly. 

     She inhaled, and the scent of him, of his sweet blood, filled her head with madness of parched thirst. She sat and tore herself out of his arms in a blind panic of horror, holding up a warning arm between them when he would have taken her hands.

     “Do no touch me!” She said.  The despair in her voice sounded heart-wrenching even to her own ears.

     “Eowyn---“

     “Your blood smells to me like honey poured over new-baked bread!” She told him in a hard, frightened voice.  “Stay back!”

     He knelt before her, close, but not touching.  The Hunters around them paid their movements no heed.  They were dead center of the assembly.  They would not be escaping. 

     “I do not fear you,” Legolas said softly.

     She wanted to weep for a year at the sweet trust in his voice.  “Oh, Legloas!” She whispered.  “We are lost!”

     He leaned forward, stubbornly taking her hands when she would have pulled away.  “Their Queen is killing her High Court, all those who drove Gimli to---to---“ He swallowed a soft sob.  His face hardened again and he schooled his countenance to smooth stoicism.  “I will not weep for them again, or cry out for their amusement, no matter what they do to me.  Eowyn, we may still die bravely!  I have not seen the Queen yet through this great throng but she is in a fine temper.  She does not like to be disobeyed and all of Morsul’s little band are paying for Gimli’s death.  If we stand unafraid before her---and more, if we anger her sufficiently---she may kill us quickly in a rage.”

     “And there is always the hope that we may somehow kill her,” Eowyn replied.  The steel in her soul, the pride of the warrior who had not blanched beneath the shadow of Angmar, who had slain trolls and were-worms in the Sunless Lands of Forodwaith, rose up and braced her spine.  “Any fell thing that darkens the waking world may die!”  She said.

     He nodded slowly, hope against all reason waking in him again at her words.  “If Sauron may be laid low by the hand of a Halfling, these monsters can die by our hands!  Every one of them!”

     She leaned forward impulsively and kissed his lips.  They were as soft and sweet as she had known they would be.  A warm rush of desire spread through her body so that her breath caught in her throat.  Here, standing in death’s doorway, she could call this feeling by its rightful name without shame or embarrassment.  It was the bitterest of ironies that the black stain of the Hunter’s blood, which had set all her senses aflame and heightened every sensation to a dizzying euphoria, had thawed the barricade of ice that had formed around all her passions in the wake of Grima’s dream rape.  He is fair and kind, Indassa had said of Legolas.  And he does not scare me.

     He gasped against her lips, perhaps in surprise, but he did not withdraw.  When she finally pulled away, she saw his face was a study of soft wonder.  She wondered if she had shocked him more than Indassa.

     “I did not wish to die this night,” she explained softly, “never having kissed any man other than Morsul.”

     His reply was lost in the ringing cries of the Hunters, cawing like a teaming parliament of rooks.  They parted like a corridor of water blown apart by a twister’s tail, forming an isle before their prisoners.  Slowly, Eowyn and Legolas stood.  She met his eyes and he nodded, his face unsmiling, his deep gray eyes hard.  Eowyn stood straight and tall, her head held high.

     Slowly, side by side, they began to walk. When one of the nearest night things would have slashed at her to galvanize her to move faster, Eowyn lashed out and caught its claw in one hand, twisting until she heard the bones snap.  “Grow strong, my daughter,” Morsul had said.  The corridor of bodies broadened perceptibly, giving them a wider berth.

     As they move forward, Eowyn saw with selfish relief that there were no familiar faces in the crowd.  She recognized none of the twenty girls and women of the Watch who had been taken without a trace at the South Pass.  She stared resolutely forward, ignoring the deafening din as they moved forward at a steady, unhurried pace. 

     The crowd rolled apart for them at the end to reveal a red-stained dais.  Upon it was a large, ornate crimson-splattered throne, wrought of human bones, sculpted and hewn into a work of art.   The throne was not so eerily beautiful as the creature that sat upon it.

     The Queen of the Hunters was pale as the moon’s reflection in the frozen seas of the North.  She was neither young nor old, but had the appearance of a woman in the high summer of her life.  Long black hair coiled about her body like a sable cloak.  She seemed to be wearing a shimmering gown of gossamer and gleaming silk, but it shifted like a mirage and shown like the strands of a spider’s web caught in moonlight.  She was beautiful as the sweetest, darkest, most forbidden sin, and though she sat upon a gore smirched throne in the midst of the dismembered bodies of her disobedient children, not a single drop of blood stained her gown or person. 

     Before her, surrounded by the gory remains of the other Hunters who had tormented Gimli to his death, knelt Morsul.  His face was bowed down to the granite floor in subjugation.  His eyes slanted toward Eowyn as they approached, standing abreast with him before his Queen.  The dark Elf met her eyes and Eowyn nearly shuddered at the fear she saw there.  Every inch of Morsul’s posture was a portrait of frozen terror.  She did not want to consider too closely what manner of being could instill such fear in a nightmare creature such as Morsul.

     The Queen was smiling lovingly down at the Elf who knelt prostrate   before her.  When she spoke, her voice was sweet as dark, honeyed mead.  “If you were not so very lovely, my naughty pet, you would have joined your playmates in decorating my dais.

     “Pardon, Mistress,” Morsul asked humbly.

     The Hunter’s Mistress rose from her throne in a liquid surge of catlike grace.  She lay one finger beneath Morsul’s chin and raised him to his feet in this fashion.  As she did this, Eowyn saw that her arm was a blackened mess of burns and scarred flesh.  Eowyn hid a smile.  Fallah would have been so proud.  

     “With your own hands, you have fashioned a fitting punishment for your disobedience, my Morsul.”  The Queen smiled and kissed the dark Elf’s lips with a wistful lover bidding farewell.  So saying, she turned to Eowyn.  Her eyes shone in the darkness.  They were not the eyes of a daughter of Man or an Elf woman.  They were pale ice blue, so pale they almost seemed white.  Her gaze was laden with such power Eowyn trembled under her cool regard, feeling foolish, like a grubby, dung-smeared urchin standing before a great queen.  Eowyn set her jaw and stayed the tremors.  Even a grubby urchin was better than this night-spawned blood-sucker.

     The Queen smiled coldly, as though reading her thoughts.  Eowyn screamed as an avalanche descended upon her, a weight of will and pressure that sucked the air from her lungs, leaving her brains feeling as though they had been scrambled.  The battering ram of power did not pierce her will but it felt as though, any moment, it might simply crush her for want of on inlet. As quickly as it began, the onslaught ceased, leaving Eowyn nauseous and dizzy.

     “Tell me,” the Queen murmured, surveying her with great interest, as though she were a bug under a glass.  “Who set the barrier within your mind?  It was not one of the Eldar.”

     “Barrier?” Eowyn repeated unsteadily.

     The Hunters’ Mistress shook her head in mild disgust.  “Ignorant wench!  There is a barrier, a stone wall of sorts, at the threshold of your feeble mind.  It is wrought with the skill and power of the Ainur.  I could crush your mind like a bug but I cannot invade it.  Who among the great thought a worthless mortal child worthy of such protection?”

    Gandalf, Eowyn’s mind whispered.
 
    The Queen’s blue ice gaze flickered to Legolas and he gasped as Eowyn had though he did not cry out.  She held the Elf’s eyes a moment before releasing him.  Legolas sagged with relief, wavering on his feet.

     “Mithrandir,” she mused.  “Gandalf the Grey.”  She rolled the names she had just pilfered from Legolas’ mind around on her tongue.  “Perhaps I knew him once, long ago.  Your memories of him touch on something familiar, though the form he wore was strange to me.  Olorin, I think, is his name.  So, he conspired to pull down Sauron and succeeded.  That explains much.  Who would have thought such a gray mouse of a scholar had such gumption!  Once, he served within the Halls of Nienna. Perhaps he tired of Her eternal blubbering.”

     “You were once of the Ainur?”  Legolas’ eyes widened.  “I know the legend of your making!  You are Thuringwethil!”

     “I was,” she replied amiably.  Eowyn felt her mouth run dry at the look the Hunter’s Queen was giving Legolas.  Thuringwethil was eyeing him with a hungry speculation, as though he were a prize piece of horseflesh, an unbroken stallion she was considering buying.  “I am called Simiasha, the Huntress.  A new name for a new age.  A small host of my folk followed the true Dark God to these shadow lands.  Sauron, the toadying sycophant, was only one of many.  He survived the fall of Angband because of his great cunning, but also because of his wondrous talent for tucking tail and fleeing whenever his games went awry.  I rejoiced in his downfall!  Now, he is so much smoke and ash wondering houseless upon the plains of Dagorlad.  How wonderful!  Sauron is no more.  The sweet-tongued young Emperor of Harad languishes in my darkness, and soon his chieftains shall begin to gut each other for a share of his realm.  Now, there is only one frail mortal obstacle standing between ourselves and absolute chaos throughout Middle Earth.”  She smile like a girl sighing over her fondest love.  “And on the wings of chaos we shall rise, my children!”

     The Hunters shouted with joy.  Their shrill cries echoed and re-echoed upon the cavern walls.

     Aragorn? Eowyn thought suddenly.  Sweet Lady, does she mean Aragorn?!

     Simiasha reached out a hand with languid slowness and took Eowyn’s chin in her charred hand.  “Did you say something, girl?”

     “You will not lure Aragorn into your web as you did Haradoun!” Eowyn told her disdainfully.

     “I already have,” Simiasha trilled with sweet evil laughter.  “I offered young Haradoun the chance to be my lieutenant beneath the Sun, my daylight sword arm in his own lands and in the West.  The little fool believed me.  I even promised him a taste of my immortal blood if he brought me the prizes I desired---the two closest friends of the King of the West!” She curled her lips, revealing her long teeth, gloating openly at the horror on the faces of her prisoners.  “We let a few of the Men of Gondor flee to safety back the way they had come.  They will have run as fast as their feet can carry them, all the way back to Minas Tirith, to tell their horrible tale.  Oh, Elessar will be so distraught when he hears that his old companions have been captured or slain!  That, coupled with the forays of my children far afield to the borderlands of Gondor, will ensure that Elessar rides gallantly to your rescue even now!  Haradoun, eager kitten that he was, offered to snare me another hostage at no extra cost.  He said that rumor among the Trade Caravan’s held that Aragorn’s warrior paramour now dwelt within my own lands.”  Simiasha smiled, seeing the flash of anger on Eowyn’s face.  “But I was misled in this, it seems.  You are still virgin, my girl.  And if you were never Elessar’s bed warmer, you are useless to me as bait to catch a King.”  She chuckled low in her throat, her glance sliding over to Legolas thoughtfully.  “But I think we can find a use for you.”

     “My Queen---“ Morsul began.

     “Nay, my pet,” Simiasha said with sweet cruelty.  “You may not keep her.  That is your punishment for having defied my law.  I do not take women into my service.  And even if I did, she is immune to my influence.  There shall be but one queen bee in this little hive.  I will not suffer pretenders.  She shall die to feed the newest of my children this night.”

      “Mistress!”  Morsul leapt forward, between Eowyn and his Queen.  The raw desperation on his face made his perfect, cold beauty seem almost vulnerable.  Almost human.  “I have served you faithfully for two full ages of this world! I beg you upon my knees!  Let me have her!  Let her be my child, my firstborn!  She will be a strong soldier---“

     “Be silent,” Simiasha said softly.  She eyed Morsul almost pityingly.  “You have remembered yourself,” she said in soft disgust.  “Your memories of your life before me are no longer blurred.”  Morsul did not reply.  His face was a mask of frozen abhorrence as she reached out and caressed his face with the scarred wreck of her hand.  “You cringe at my touch like a living Elf, you who have always gutted those who would even think of usurping your place in my bed. Now, you know why it is forbidden for any save myself to bring a soul into our darkness.  The exchange of blood is a two-edged sword, my sweet Teleri prince.  If the mind and will of the child is stronger than that of the maker, the maker shall fall prey to the will of his own creation.  You have disobeyed me thrice in as many nights.  You lost me the naugrim with your childish games.  I should destroy you for such impudence, but I can think of no greater punishment for you, in your present malady, than to have the subject of your new obsession taken from you.  She is barricaded against your influence by Olorin’s spell.  She feels nothing but loathing for you, her own sire.  But you, my love, are well on your way to being her willing slave!”  Her voice was steadily rising, her flimsy façade a human beauty falling away as her lips drew back in a canid snarl of rage.  She rounded on Eowyn.  “Her will, her self-righteous, pitying, merciful heart, her suffocating, crippling pretensions of bravery and morality, have poisoned the purity of your evil!  You, who were my perfect consort, vicious and utterly wicked, are ruined!  She has usurped the rule of my will over you and, for that, I would kill her a thousand times over if I could!”

     Simiasha wheeled with a growl of rage and regarded Legolas with salacious hunger.  Morsul caught Eowyn by the arm when she would have moved forward.  “She will not kill him,” he hissed in her ear.  “Do not throw your life away!”

     “So fair,” Simiasha said softly, her eyes boring into him, so that he began to shiver visibly under her heavy gaze.  “I can bring you to need with a touch, child.  My mind within yours can sweep aside your delicate Elvish sensibilities.  I can show you pleasure you never dreamt of. What would you do, Prince of Mirkwood, if I took you to my bed?”

      “I would die, Highness,” Legolas answered her in a soft frightened voice, his words almost a whisper.  “Within the hour.”

     “Yes,” she agreed thoughtfully.  “I believe you would.  We shall save that romp for later, after I have improved upon you.”  She gripped him by the throat.  Her strength must have been monstrous.  Legolas could not fight her; he simply hung suspended in her grasp as she slowly lifted him off his feet.  His hands clutched feebly at her suddenly claw-like fingers, but he seemed to be losing consciousness.  Simiasha cut her eyes back to Eowyn, smiling spitefully.  “Hold her back, my Morsul, or you shall see me bathe in her blood,” she told Morsul.  He had once more leapt forward and caught Eowyn by the waist when she would have rushed forward.

    Simiasha’s lovely jaw had distended into something hideous.  Her shimmering gown rippled amid the crackling sound of bones shifting beneath the surface of the skin.  Two great black, batlike wings unfurled at her back.  One of her wings was torn and tattered, as fire-blackened as her arm.  With slow deliberation, she pulled Legolas forward and slanted her eyes again at Eowyn.

     “You have taken my Elf for your slave,” she hissed.  “Well and good.  I shall have yours!”

     She thrust her teeth deep into Legolas’ bare shoulder.  He made no sound---even now, he held to his vow not to give them the pleasure of his screams---but his body convulsed as she battened upon him, drinking his life away.

     Eowyn heard someone crying out in horror, shrieking in denial.  It took her a moment to realize she was the one who was screaming.  She was slashing at Morsul, tearing into the flesh of his hands and arms as he held her with long sharp nails. In her desperation, she did not even notice that her own hands had altered. 

     “No!”  She wailed.  “No!”

      Not him!  Not Legolas ruined and defiled and drowned in darkness!  She had a sudden vision of Legolas’ face twisted into a copy of Morsul’s murderous, arrogant, countenance and the image nearly sent her mad with horror.  She would tear the Moon and stars from the sky before she saw him so corrupted.

     “Let me go!”  She cried hysterically.  The added strength of her terror was making it difficult for Morsul to hold onto her.

     “No!” He said harshly as she fought him like a wild thing.  “She will kill you in an instant!  You cannot save him!  You cannot!”

     Simiasha paid them no heed.  She raised her head, her mouth streaming with Legolas’ blood.  “So sweet!”  She said thickly.  Slowly, she held up her fire-scarred arm and the host of blood drinkers crowed their joy as both arm and wing rippled.  The furrows and melted flesh smoothed out into alabaster perfection and the sable membrane of her wing was made whole again.  With a billow of her great wings, she sprang into the air, carrying Legolas’ limp body with her.  She hovered over the throng of her children while they roared with worship, before settling back to the floor at the center of the multitude. 

     From the elevation of the throne dais, Eowyn watched, paralyzed, as Simiasha tilted Legolas’ head back and held him with her eyes, boring into her soul.  Legolas, still conscious, though only just, stared back, trapped in mesmerized horror.  He began to gasp like a drowning swimmer as the weight of her gaze pressed down upon him.

     “What is she doing?!” Eowyn moaned.

     At her back, Morsul still held her in a firm grip.  He trembled against her, his voice unsteady and hoarse.  “She is---she is forcing her will upon him,” he hissed in her ear.  “She is pushing herself into his mind, unmaking everything that he is.  She is---“ Morsul’s voice caught in a hitch as Legolas uttered a long, heart-torn wail.

     Eowyn wondered madly if he was reliving his own birth into darkness.  Had Simiasha spoken the truth when said Eowyn’s blood had freed him from the poison of the Huntress’ malicious control, awakening some pale shadow of the Elf he had once been?  She saw Indassa’s dark eyes open wide in death, Fallah’s head covered with blood, heard the sound of Gimli’s terrible sobs before he had jumped to his death.  She did not care what Morsul was or was not; he had taken too much from her to ever be forgiven.  But if he could help her save Legolas, she would wield him like a sword against her enemy.  She saw again, the agonizing picture of Legolas’ sweet goodness spoiled and blackened into this night creature who held her now.  She sank her fingers into his forearms. 

     “Help him!”  She commanded.  “If this horrifies you so, help him, you worthless coward!” 

     “We will die if we try to save him,” he told her, his face taut with indecision.

      And again, Legolas screamed, a sound of such despair and loss her heart shriveled.  She tried to project her will, her need, her desperation to save Legolas at Morsul, praying to all the Valar that Simiasha had spoken the truth about the dark Elf.  Morsul shuddered as though he had received a physical blow.    

     “Help me, Morsul!” She pleaded.  “If you truly have remembered yourself, then die like a warrior of the Eldar!”

      He sighed, drawing air in and out of his breathless lungs.  He released her.  “I have dwelt in darkness for two full ages.  I shall try to be worthy again of my birthright.”  His eyes glowed briefly with dark wicked humor.
“I would that you have shared my bed, if only once.  Even if you flayed my manhood thereafter, it would have been wondrous sweet.  But your back to mine, dearest, and we shall fight our way to him!”

     “We have no swords,” she said tensely.

     He chuckled mirthlessly.  “You no longer need a sword, love.”

     They leapt forward and, together, they began to hew the Hunters from their path.  Eowyn closed her thinking mind to the sight of her red-stained hands, to the images of her own nails extended like daggers.  If tomorrow came, she will herself not to remember the pleasurable feel of snapping bone and tearing flesh beneath her hands.  She was sure if she clearly retained a clear recollection of the sensation of her own sinew and bones shifting and reshaping themselves she would run mad.

     They sliced a bloody corridor of undead flesh, moving forward one impossible step at a time.  The night things ringed them on all sides, hurling themselves en masse at the pair who fought back to back, wearing them down with sheer numbers.  Even so, they nearly made it.  The nearly reached their goal.

     Eowyn had one brief, harrowing glimpse of Legolas, bled white as bleached bone.  He was kneeling before Simiasha, drinking from the Huntress’ wrist, his brilliant eyes glazed and utterly lost.  Eowyn cried out, all sense of self-preservation flown at this sight, and rushed forward.  And as she did so, a great, thick-boned Hunter rammed a wooden spear the size of a fence post through Morsul’s chest, impaling him.  Without an ally at her back, she did not last long.

     They took her by the arms and legs.  It took two dozen of them together to restrain her.  They bore her down to their feeding ground and leapt down through the open mouth of the pit at its center.  They fell, past endless ant hive furrows in the stone about them, past tier upon tier of dusty bone-dry corpses.  Down and down and down they plummeted, in a descent that was not quite flight, not quite free fall.  They smashed to the ground in a lightless, sunless pit of permanent midnight.  A cackling cheer rose about her as the greatest of their number, a misshapen giant that Eowyn knew must have begun its existence as a cave troll, lifted the spear that still had Morsul spitted upon it.  The enormous Hunter shoved the spear that was nearly as thick as Eowyn’s thigh into the sheer face of the Pit’s wall, with a wordless grunt of laughter.

     And with that, they left, winging their way upward.  Eowyn sat where they had dropped her, staring around numbly at her surroundings.  This must be another of their feeding places.  Everywhere were bodies, animals, humans, orcs and trolls.  There was no floor visible here. The Pit was thirty yards across at its broadest point, but the ground, she realized without emotion, was a carpet of ground bone and compacted bodies.  She wondered how far down the pile went and decided she did not want to know.
The top layer of bodies were fresh.

      She was in their holding pen, their larder of fresh game.

      The newest bodies here wore Gondorian and Haradrim armor.  Eowyn knelt and turned one of the corpses, knowing it was too small to be a man.  She stared down at the dead girl’s face.  Eowyn knew her, knew her face, but she could not remember her name.

     “You deserve better than that,” she told the girl.  Another soul to add to the growing list of those she had failed.

     Oh, Legolas!  Her heart wept. I am sorry!

     Her head snapped up, sensing movement, sensing a bright, furiously burning flame of life.  She stood, homing in on the singular presence, and strode unerringly toward its source.  The bone grist crunched beneath her bootheels like seashells. 

      The Man was chained to the wall, perhaps thirty feet from where Morsul hung impaled.  His tattered halberd and cuirass were fashioned in the style of Harad.  He was young, perhaps a year or two younger than Eowyn, but his hair had gone stark white.  She gazed into his face, too sunk into her own shock to be impressed that his eyes were still lucid and sane after two full weeks in this Pit of carrion. 

     “Can you still speak?” She asked softly.

     “Are you real, woman?” He croaked.  His voice was hoarse from screaming.  “Are you a dream?”

     “I am real,” she said.  She tore the chain that held his hands bound about his head, ripping it from the cavern wall.

     He did not move.  He stayed still as a stone, his eyes wide and blindly searching.  Of course, she thought.  He could not see in the dark.  Unlike her.

     “Are you one of them?” He asked in a tired voice.

     “Not quite,” she replied.

     “All my men are slain,” he told her hesitantly.  “I saw your eyes glowing yellow in the darkness and I thought they had finally come for me.  Their bitch Queen told me she would save me for last.”

      “Your men?”  She peered at him intently.  Slowly, she smiled.  She had a feeling it was not a pleasant expression.  “You are Haradoun.”

      “I am,” he said.  “Are you---?”  He growled in frustration.  “I cannot see you!  Are you one of the warrior women of Rhunballa?  I thought they had killed all of you the first night.”

      “I am one of the defenders of Rhunballa,” she told him gently.  “But I was not taken at the South Pass. I am Eowyn of Rohan, Captain of the Rhunballani Watch and, until recently, Queen’s Guard to Her Majesty Indassa.”

      He was silent, letting that sink in.  Finally, he laughed ruefully and sighed in compete resignation.  He did not ask for mercy, and for that, she thought more of him.  “Here is irony in its purest form.”

      “Yes,” she agreed.

     “Even so,” he said, “I am glad to see you, woman.  I would rather die like a Man for a Man’s transgressions than have one of them devour me.”  His young face grew solemn.  “They told me my little Indassa is dead.  I did not wish that.  I would have made it up to her, you know. She would have been first wife to an Emperor and mother to the next Emperor of Harad.  I would have spoiled her beyond reason and made her forget her father’s death and the discomfort of losing her maidenhead by force.”

      Eowyn’s brows drew together.  She felt exhausted.  He did not realize that what he had done was beyond forgiveness or redress.  He did not really understand that he had done anything wrong at all, and if they sat in this dark hole in the ground a hundred years she could not have explained it to him.  So, she simply killed him.  She took his head in her hands and snapped his neck.

     She turned away after staring dull-eyed at the corpse for a moment or two.  She wondered back to where Morsul hung impaled upon the wall.  He was conscious, returning her gaze silently, but he did not speak.  She gave him a cold eye and knelt again beside the dead girl whose name she could not remember.  Eowyn closed the girl’s eyes.  After a moment’s thought, she began to dig a grave in the bone fragments and decay.  Any grave was better than none at all.  As she lay the body into the shallow hole she had dug, she saw there was something clenched tightly on either of the girl’s hands.  She smelled a faint resin odor of sulfur and lamp oil. 

      Oh Sweet Elbereth….

      She held the little treasures she had found up to her eyes, not trusting that they were not some illusion born of broken madness.  It was a pair of flint stone and one of Fallah’s fire bottles.

      “Will you kill him when he comes for you?” Morsul asked softly.

     Eowyn stood, flints and bottle in hand.  She surveyed the post-sized spear that was protruding from the dark Elf’s chest.  She broke the wood at the base and tore it from his breast none too gently.  He bucked with agony, but did not cry out as he slid to the ground.

     “How are you even still alive?” She glowered down at him without sympathy.

     He chuckled weakly.  “I am not alive, love.”

     “I am not your love,” she said, sitting down beside him, rolling the flints in her hands like dice.  She had a little time yet to screw her courage to what she knew she must do.  She was too hopelessly tired and lost in despair to even bother with killing him.

     “You might have been,” he said.  He smiled like a broken dissonant song that was lovely nevertheless.  “Had we met in the flowering gardens of Doriath, the land of my birth.  Or later, by Havens of Sirion.  I would have wooed you and perhaps won you had we met beneath the Sun in any age of this world."  He took her hand in his and she did not have the strength left to draw it away.  “You are planning to use that little fire contraption to set us all afire when Oropher’s grandchild is cast down to feed upon you.  It is very dry down here and I imagine the contents of the Pit will make for quite a large bonfire.  Hear me.  There is an alternative to setting your souls free by fire.”

     “Tell me,” she said.

     “In Doriath,” he said, “long time past, Elwe Singollo was King.  I was Captain of his Royal Guard.  Now, Greycloak was proud, and a powerful warrior in his own right.  Ever did he go forth without his Guard when it pleased him.  I was not there to guard his back when the treacherous naugrim gutted him in the belly of their mountain, coveting the Silmaril if our beloved Luthien.  For a season, we mourned him in despair, but out hope and our joy was renewed when the son of Tinuviel took the throne. 
He was---“ Morsul sighed, a rattling wisp of sound.  “Dior was very like Thranduil’s young son. He was brave and innocent and more beautiful that the dawn on a summer’s morn.  And I came to love in much the same way you loved your young Indassa.”

     “I know the rest of this tale,” Eowyn murmured.  “The sons of Feanor made war on Doriath for the Silmaril.”

     “It is not a tale,” he told her.  “Our young king commanded that I take his wife and children to safety.  Even in this I failed.  The Queen was slain outright before I found her.  The two little ones were carried into the wild, and what became of them I do not know.  Only one child did I save.  I took the little Princess Elwing and as many others as I could find and led them away from the battle.  My young Lord was slaughtered defending his realm from the kin-slayers and all of Doriath was brought to wreck and ruin.  We came at length to the Havens of Sirion, where we dwelt in peace for a time among a collection of refugees from the sack of other realms.  But the Silmaril called to the sons of Feanor and they fell upon us without warning.  Elf slew Elf again and the bay of Sirion ran red with blood.  This time, I was there to defend my charges.  I failed.  I was wounded near to death in the fighting.  My Lady Elwing leapt into the sea with the Silmaril clasped to her breast.  Her young sons were taken captive.  When I woke from my stupor, I ran mad.  I tracked the host of Maglor, seeking the children of Elwing.  I did not find them.  Instead I found her.”

     “Thuringwethil,” Eowyn whispered. 

     “The Woman of the Night,” he said.  “She offered me strength to slay the kin-slayers.  She offered an end to grief and memory.  I did not lie when I said I chose this darkness.  I intended to hunt down and slay every Elf who had raised a sword against Doriath and Sirion.  And perhaps exterminate the entire naugrim race while I was at it.  I meant to slaughter them all.  But when she made me hers, memory and regret slipped away, just as she had promised.  All my long life to that point seemed like a sad dream, unreal and unimportant.  Every thought and perception was soiled through the filter of her malice and her cruelty.”  He took her hand and kissed it reverently.  “That is what I was.  That is how I fell.  When I took your blood, her rule over my heart and mind began to fade.  And more than that, the disconnect from my memory and my former self evaporated.  I remembered all my life with perfect clarity.”  He shook his head weakly.  “I do not know how this happened.  I think, because you are immune to her influence that your blood imparted that immunity to me.  You will be sorely tempted to use that fire flagon when your Legolas arrives.  He will not be as you knew him.  He will be as I was.”

     “Legolas…” She said the name softly, choking on her grief.

     “You must decide what you will do when he comes,” Morsul told her.  “Whatever comes to pass, you are both changing.  Your bodies will die within four weeks. You may fight him when he comes to feed.  You may kill him or he may kill you or you may burn us all with your flint and fire bottle.  Either way, the end is the same while Thuringwethil lives.  She is the mother of us all, the wellspring source of our evil.  But if you can kill her before your bodies die, you may be free of this taint.”

     “How?”  Eowyn asked desperately.  “How!?”
 
    Morsul smiled.  “Two weaknesses she has.  Though a few of her children can move about in the daylight hours, she cannot stir while the Sun is overhead.  Morgoth hobbled her in this way to keep her from growing too powerful.  The other weakness you have used against her already.  You hold its catalyst in your hands.”  His smile turned wicked.  “The Nest is very dry this time of year, love. As dry as a tinder box.”

     Eowyn stared down at the flints in her hands.

     Morsul shuddered, his lips gray and bloodless, gazing upward.  “The boy wakes,” he said sorrowfully.  His voice was a breath above a whisper.  “His thirst is great.  And his every thought is curdled to viciousness.  But you may save him.  If you are brave enough.”

     “How?” She asked once more, leaning down to hear his fading breath.

     He smiled.  It was a real smile.  A sad, sweet echo of all that had been ruined.  He touched her cheek, drawing one finger across her lips.  “In the same way you saved me.”

     The breath he had drawn in to speak sighed out of his body.  The hand upon her face crumbled like withered parchment and fell away to dust.  His body simply dissolved into dry earth.

     He had butchered her soldiers.  He had murdered Indassa and wounded Fallah perhaps beyond healing.  He had drug her screaming into the dark and poisoned her with the vileness of his blood.  And still, if she could have wept for him she would have done so.

     She sat alone in the darkness, alone in the still, silent Pit of the moldering dead, and waited, trying to think of nothing.

     She felt him fall, plummeting down from the open maw of the haint half a mile above.  Like her, he could not yet fly.  She sensed that ability would not come while their bodies still drew breath, while their hearts still pumped life through living flesh.

     He crashed down, driving a shower of bone splinters into the air with the force of his impact.  He knelt, hunched and motionless in the little crater he had made, less than twenty feet from where she sat.  She did not move, waiting for him to get his bearings.  He would find her soon enough.

     “Eowyn?” His voice was low and soft.  It sounded almost normal.

     She did not answer.

     He raised his head.  He stretched, uncurling his body with sinuous grace like a great deadly cat.  His eyes found hers and he smiled.  “Eowyn.  I have come to return the kiss you gave me.”

     She wanted to die of grief for the sly, cold mockery in those words.

     “Then come and kiss me,” she told him softly.

     She did not move a muscle as he approached cautiously, not trusting her compliance.  He knelt before her and she saw his eyes had bled to luminous amber.  His skin was white as new snow, radiant in the darkness.  Even now, he was still so beautiful her heart ached in her chest.

     “I thirst, Eowyn,” he said, drawing one finger down her face.  “You will not fight me?”

     “I am tired to death of fighting,” she said truthfully.  “I am changing, as you are, Legolas.  I would rather die by your hand than be one of them.”

     “Simiasha commanded that I slay you before daybreak,” he murmured, regret like rain in his voice.  His hand was upon her neck, brushing her hair aside. His skin was cool, but not cold.  There was still life in his body.  “It grieves me that you must die.  If you had only opened your mind to her she might have spared you.”  He leaned forward and hooked one arm gently behind the small of her back, pulling her close.   “She has washed away memory and regret, and all my sorrows.  She has spared me the torment of guilt and inhibition and childish innocence.”  He took her lips and kissed her, long and deep, crushing her body to his.  Even lost in the horror of seeing him so changed, so marred, it took her breath.  Every nerve ending sang with desire.  Her heart was galloping in her breast like a runaway horse.

     He smiled against her lips, his forehead pressed against hers.  “When you woke in the Temple without your memories, I could smell your desire for me.  It was like the perfume of a sweet flower that had bloomed at long last after a bitter spring.”  His hand at her back moved up her spine, sliding beneath her tunic.  His hand smoothing over her bare skin made her gasp against his mouth.  “When you kissed me, I felt as though my body had been set afire.  Fool that I was, I barely knew what it was I was feeling.  It was so new, unlike anything I had ever known.  I wanted you, and that filled me with wonder and fear for us both.” He kissed his way down the line of her throat.  “I would have sealed these words in my heart forever, afraid to speak them aloud, afraid to reach out and take what I wanted.  I fear nothing now.  I am less gentle than I was.  I want you still, like a fire in my veins.  You body, your blood, all of you!  Lay with me, Eowyn.  We may still have one sweet taste of what might have been.  And when the dawn comes, I shall set your soul free of this darkness, as you wished. But I shall remember you always.”

     She tilted her head back, laying her throat bare to him.  “Drink the first draught,” she whispered.

     He kissed her once more, deep and lingering.  Then he buried his teeth in the base of her throat.  He drank down the river of her life, his body trembling against hers in eager pleasure.  He bore her down upon her back and she arched against him, wrapping her arms and legs around him. 

     A wave of pressure and pleasure was building low in her body.  Every heightened sense was filled with his scent, his taste, the feel of the bare silken skin of his back under her hands, the weight of his body upon hers.  The dam burst within her, sending a blazing backdraft wave of fire burning through her.  She bowed her back and cried out as it swept her up on its crest, leaving her breathless and spent when it finally began to subside.

     Her eyes dimmed.  She lay gasping and dazed, holding onto consciousness by a thin, frayed thread.  Had he drunk too deeply?  Was she dying?  Little by little, her breath came easier and the pounding of her laboring heart in her ears slowed.  She became aware of the sound of someone weeping.  It was a broken litany of so much loss, such inconsolable grief.  It was the sound of every secret fear of childhood made real.

     Legolas was sobbing, holding her limp body in his arms as though he could take back what he had just done with the strength of his embrace alone.  “Eowyn!  Eowyn!”  He moaned softly.  “Do not die!  Oh, Eru, let this be some terrible dream!  I am lost!  Eowyn, I am sorry!  I am sorry!”

     She raised one hand weakly and brushed the matted gold of his hair from his face, wiping the tears away.  She wished she had the strength to shout with joy when she saw that his eyes were once more their own deep gray.  He was once more himself.

     “I am not dying,” she told him gently.  And she held him as best she could as he fell to weeping again, this time from relief.

     “You are free!” She smiled faintly.  “You are free of her.”

     “I am free,” he said in a quavering voice.  “Though I do not know how.  But you---“  His eyes widened and he jerked in surprise.  “You let me---!”

     “My blood is somehow a serum that purges her poison from the soul if not from the body,” she murmured.  “I think it is part of the spell Gandalf wove to bar Grima from entering my mind again.”

     He accepted this, but his eyes filled once more as the memory of what he had just done crashed down on him again.  “You should have slain me rather than let me---“ His words cracked on another sob.  “---let me tear at your throat and drink your blood like a rabid beast!  I would have gladly died rather than do such a thing.  Oh, Elbereth!  Do not say I did not hurt you!  I made you scream!”

     “Legolas,” she said quietly, patiently.  “That was not a cry of pain.”

     “It was not---?”  He blinked down at her in derailed confusion.  Then slowly, incredibly, his face began to redden with shy embarrassment.  “Oh,” he said eloquently.

     And unbelievably, she felt soft laughter spring upward inside her.  After
a moment, one corner of his mouth crooked and his chest vibrated against hers in a feeble chuckle.  She wound her arms around him and he returned the embrace with fierce relief.  His head was buried in the crook of her neck.  Her arms encircled him and her legs were curled about his body, her ankles hooked behind his knees.

     “It is beyond indecent to rest in such an intimate embrace with a maid who is neither my wife nor my betrothed,” he said softly. “But I beg you, let me borrow your warmth a little longer.  You are warm and alive, and even with their poison in your veins, you smell of sun and summer flowers in bloom!  She was so cold, Eowyn!  She was so cold!”  He shivered against her, burying his face in her hair.

     “Did she---?”  Eowyn could not bring herself to say the words aloud.

     “No,” he sighed.  “She believed me when I told her I would be dead within the hour if she used me so.  She said I would accept her caresses willingly once I was fully changed.”

     “Morsul is dead,” she told him.  “Before he died, he told me many things.  We will not be truly one of them until our bodies die.  Their poison will kill us within two fortnights.  But he also told me that we might be free of the contagion completely if we destroy its source.  We must kill Simiasha while she sleeps.”  Her hand fumbled for the two flints she had dropped.  She grasped them in her hand like a talisman.  “When dawn comes, we will climb out of this Pit and burn out the Nest!”

     “Dawn.”  He said the word like a prayer.  “I can feel it drawing nigh.  The Sun will rise in another hour.”  He kissed her, hesitantly, like a shy whisper against her lips, a promise of life and light that lay beyond this haunt of waking nightmares.   “Let us rest until then, meleth-nin.”

     “Meleth-nin,” she sighed against his neck, wrapping him around her like a soft blanket.  It felt so good to be touched, to be held in someone’s arms.
 It felt warm in ways she could not begin to express.  “What does that mean?”

     “I will tell tomorrow,” he said softly.  “When we stand together under the Sun.”

     She closed her eyes.  They drowsed together, lying in each other’s arms, awaiting the coming of the Sun.

(Coming Soon: Chapter III---Fire, Sun and Shadow)