Dwimmerlaik

Author’s Notes: The long delay has chafed but at last with a new, finally working computer and a bit—well, a lot—of time, I finally have another chapter ready for your perusal. Surprisingly, it is not the last. After some debate, I decided to split a very large chapter into two. This works for two reasons, now, you have something to read and I have a bit more time to polish.

Of course, everybody extend many warm and grateful thanks to my unofficial beta, Noelnoel, for his indispensable help and insight throughout the chapter. Thank you, Noel, from a frustrated writer’s heart for your fortitude and seemingly endless patience while I ground this out piecemeal. This chapter—and I—have reached a level I never expected and am delighting in.

Best,

The Lady of Light

Part Fifteen

When All Lights Pass

When the black breath blows

And death’s shadow grows

And all lights pass,

Come athelas! Come athelas!

Life to the dying,

In the king’s hand lying!

--Tolkien The Return of the King.

A black shrike, full-glutted on the rich feast the night’s battle had provided, fluttered lazily down to perch on a knobby orc head, the eyes long since picked out. It cawed raggedly and began to search out the softer meat hiding beneath when a long blade thrust up inches from its beak. With a shrill croak of outrage, the offended bird took ponderously to the air and vanished into the cave’s darkness.

The knife slashed air as Critz clawed and tore his way out from beneath the corpses he’d dragged over himself. It had been a close thing. He staggered to his feet with a dreadful curse and, tucking his knife blade between his teeth, he clapped his left hand over the dripping, mangled mass which was all that remained of his sword arm. Damn that elf to the depths of iron-hell!Dreaming of bloody revenge and clamping down tightly on his steel, he lurched out of the silent charnel house Fornost had become.

The cold air was a relief to his over-heated hide. For a moment, he stood in the small gateway, nostrils flaring wide. Smoke and charring meat. His crimson eyes flickered slightly west where he could just see a thin film marring the indigo sky. Someone had lit a pyre or pyres. With a longing grunt, the orc turned away and half-scrambled, half-slithered down towards the quarries, heading away from the smoke whence the reek of Elves came. If he could get far enough away…somewhere dark before dawn… It was a steep climb into the limestone pits and he almost bit through his knife as each uneven boulder or sliding scree jolted his maimed hand and threatened to pitch him head over heels on the rocks.

On his right, the northern march of the mountains climbed dark and inexorable. There, he could nurse his wounds and his hate. He could be patient. He was a survivor. With these cheering thoughts in mind, he began to scale the further side which proved even more difficult with few handholds and one less hand with which to seek them. He stopped short, his crimson eyes widening suddenly when he detected movement on the ledge above his head. Relinquishing his grip, he scrambled down the way he came until the wind changed and the scent of the intruder slapped him sharp in the face. He took his knife from between his teeth to laugh in relief and turned his lamp-like eyes upward.

“My sweet,” he breathed to a pair of yellow eyes a few feet above his head.

His wolf made a low sound in her throat, somewhere between a whine and a growl. She shifted forward and a soft clink rattled in the quiet. Around her ruff, a chain was wrapped and driven with an iron nail jammed a crack in the stones.

Critz narrowed his eyes so he could make out the lean figure seated casually and almost invisibly beside the feral creature, a fire-hardened staff propped up against its knee. The orc started to chuckle. “Why if it isn’t my little weasel. Thought you’d had it back there.”

The lurid glow of old burns stood out in the sinew of his forearms as Torenul pushed the wolf’s seeking muzzle away from his leg. His eyes which held an unusual glitter flicked insolently over the once-feared orc leader. “You’re not looking so good yourself, wraith-rat. What happened? Your vaunted Shrieker turn tail at the first sight of his thrashers?”

The insulting epithet was not lost on Critz as he tightened his grip convulsively on his stump of a forearm which had begun to drip black ichor in an increasing puddle around his stained boots. His words hissed between his teeth, taut and shrill with pain. “You grubby maggot, get down here and I’ll show you just what--”

The wolf’s ears twitched at the angry tone and she gave a sharp, wrenching tug on the lead. Torenul hurriedly grasped the loosening stake, holding it steady.

The laugh lines around the orc’s eyes crinkled with contemptuous amusement even as he took a careful step back from the flame-eyed wolf he had so often set upon others in his cruel pit-games.

“I won’t hold you long, Critz,” Torenul said, a dark smile crookedly quirking a corner of his mouth but his eyes were hard and remorseless as the granite and limestone stacked around them. “I haven’t done much in my life that I’m proud of.” he began to wriggle the stake out. “Fact is, I might be little better than you…But at least it’s a little.”

As he spoke, he gradually loosened his hold on the straining chain, the links sliding through his fingers. The wolf’s growls increased, rumbling over the ears of her suddenly uncertain master who eyed her baring fangs with distinct trepidation.

“Now, lad…you keep tight hold of her…she smells blood and she’ll—”

Torenul’s voice was like a knell, tolling over his protests. “You’ve earned this death, orc. For Sayna, and for all the others you killed…” A stinging blow to the wolf’s hindquarters fended her away from the slave and maddened by the blow and the stench of helplessness, she sprang for the first defenseless creature.

Critz barely had time for an expression of stunned disbelief to flitter across his face before the wolf’s teeth sank into it.

Torenul leaned on his stick and watched the scarlet glint fade from the former slave master’s dreadful eyes. When the desperate heaving limbs stopped convulsing and scrabbling against the rocks, he rose. Without a backward glance, he turned his back on the black bastion of Fornost and his face towards freedom under the open sky.

----------

Veil lowered his bony frame wearily beside the small pool in the orchard. He chafed his hands together, wincing as crimson flakes peeled away from his ashy skin. It had taken him and the other quarry workers the better part of an hour to separate the wounded from the dead and lay them in the orchard where the elven healer Glorfindel had brought with him, the Dúnedain chieftain and those who knew a little about wounds could help them. The pyres still smoked from the orc-dead they had piled and burnt in the courtyard. Their own dead they had covered and laid carefully in the shade until they could bury or otherwise tend them.

Enough slaves—former slaves—had survived the battle to ponder afterwards what they would do now. Some wanted to pick up the threads of their old lives, what snarled and ragged remains they could find. Others wanted something new, something far away from the degradation and hardship of the north. Veil had his own plans.

His arm swung out suddenly and he caught the thin, giggling mass of dark hair that had been trying to creep up in the reeds behind him. He bared his teeth. “Trying to sneak one over your daddy? Shame on you, girl.” He tucked her close around his arm and she giggled, struggling until he let her go. She sat close beside him and he reached out and stroked her grimy cheek fondly.

“Not too long, darling. We’ll have a little house of our own. Somewhere far from here. Would you like that? A little patch of field maybe, grow barley or oats. Keep a few horses and chickens.”

She nodded vigorously, still unused to being allowed to talk.

Movement automatically drew their eyes as they watched a dapper young soldier whose blue and white livery of Imladris was spotted with gore strode rapidly past them without even a glance, eyes fixed ahead on some determined destination.

“He’s in a hurry,” Veil remarked, letting Henna wriggle away. His eyes followed the soldier as he headed towards the area arranged for the wounded.

----------

“Hold still.”

Aragorn set his teeth and clenched his fingers into tight fists, a small, muffled grunt escaping his lips.

“If you wish me to get this finished at all in the next moon, I need you to relax,” the elven healer who had accompanied Glorfindel’s contingent said, his eyes barely inches from his careful work.

The ranger let out a long, slow breath, trying to drain the tension from his muscles as much as he could. He felt a slight tug at his numb shoulder and focused on the far wall of the makeshift tent cobbled together from supplies discovered in the orc barracks. The canvas flapped in a quiet wind and the lantern set next to their legs (for there was nowhere else to put it) flickered. A dull flash glinted in the corner of his eye as the suturing needle dipped again.

“Hurry up then.” He cut a quick glance at his shoulder when the healer paused to blot the wound. “The stitches are too far apart.”

For the first time in several long minutes, the elf raised his sharp eyes from his work and nailed his charge with a glance that had struck fretful children dumb in their mother’s arms. The healer harrumphed and snipped the end of the knotted thread indignantly. Tossing the spare string into a rubbish tin, he said from behind grit teeth, “Next time you may stitch your own wounds then, master ranger. I’m afraid it’s the best I can do in this dreadful lighting.”

Aragorn shrugged gingerly back into his blood-stiff tunic. “It is not I you should be tending anyway, Gûrion. Your skills are better used elsewhere.”

“And with patients less troublesome,” the healer added acidly, still gathering up his things with biting impatience. “There are those who would be a little more grateful to be spared their arm after a wound like that. Tore the tendon in your shoulder. You’ll be lucky to shoot a bow again.”

“Well, at least I can move it.” Aragorn said, grimacing slightly.

“Don’t you dare! If you pull those stitches out, I’ll bind you hand and foot in bandages until y—where do you think you’re going? I’m not finished with you yet.”

Aragorn had turned over his shoulder to reply when a blue-and-white liveried soldier ducked into the tent, almost colliding with him. The ranger took a swift step backward and Gûrion pounced, thrusting his arm into a sling.

“You are going to keep that shoulder still until it mends. If you have any illusions that I will somehow not know if my orders are being carried out, you are very much mistaken and you will be all the more sorry for it. Yes, well? What do you want?” he snapped this at the young soldier who straightened as if under a commander’s whiplash.

“Sir, Lords Elladan and Elrohir request your assistance. They fear he’s worsening,” the elf added with an almost apologetic glance at Aragorn.

“How badly?” Aragorn asked, adjusting the sling to a more comfortable position around his neck as Gûrion started throwing supplies into a bag.

The soldier shook his head regretfully. “I could not say. I am no healer.”

“No, you’re not. I am. Move, young one. Quickly,” Gûrion shoved him back out through the tent flap, Aragorn right on his heels.

Shoulder jolting at every long-legged stride, Aragorn muttered under his breath as they whipped past the small campfires that had been set up in the orchard. Those less wounded lay near a large bonfire for the night had grown chill as it deepened.

“I told you, you should not have left him to come to me.”

“Well, you were too damnably stubborn to come to me, what else was I to do? Defy the lords Elladan and Elrohir?” Gûrion asked without looking over his shoulder.

“Yes.”

Gûrion barked a mirthless laugh. “I’m afraid, young Chieftain of the Dúnedain, that despite your high position they still outrank you by far.”

They slowed as they came to another tent set a little ways from the others. Aragorn ducked in ahead of Gûrion and a waft of warm air instantly wreathed his head along with the heady stench of coal. A brazier glowed beside the tent flap, warming the small space almost unbearably.

Elladan and Elrohir both looked up. Elladan stepped aside to make room for Gûrion who crouched quickly beside the pallet set against the wall of the tent closest to the brazier.

“Estel, you are supposed to be resting,” Elladan admonished, sounding more tiredly exasperated than anything.

“I couldn’t sleep.” When Elladan looked ready to argue, Aragorn gestured his brother to silence. Gûrion was questioning Elrohir and he wanted to hear what they were saying.

“—talking for the past couple of hours on and off.”

“Delirium?”

“No fever. If anything, he is too cold.”

“Hmm.” Gûrion leaned over the blanket-draped form. “Has he said anything useful? Something that might help us?”

“Nothing save…No.”

“Did you at least get him to take some fluids?”

“We—we tried. Elladan had to hold him down…” Elrohir’s voice shook and he touched the lightly stained bandage wrapping his head with a wince. “He—he screamed if we touched him. We couldn’t…”

Gûrion’s face softened perceptively. “All right. We’ll see if we can remedy that. I’ll need to examine him myself. There was little enough time beforehand and others more immediately hurt. You say these wounds were inflicted by orcs?”

Something tightened behind Elladan’s eyes. “Most of them.”

Elrohir closed his own and his brother, face full of concern, touched his shoulder. “Elrohir, I would feel better if you took your rest while Gûrion does what he needs to do. You have had a long day and that wound of yours was no light touch.”

Opening his eyes, Elrohir looked as if he might protest but Gûrion raised a long, thin forefinger. “No, he is quite right, my lord. Rest is the best treatment for all wounds.”

Allowing himself to be persuaded, Elrohir agreed so long as they called him if they needed his help or if anything changed.

Aragorn edged further into the small area at his brother’s departure and sat down close beside the pallet’s edge. Gûrion cast him a swift glance but the ranger steeled his jaw and lifted his chin, telling the elven healer in no uncertain terms that, wounded or not, he would not be moved.

“Lord Elladan, this…this is a delicate task…I would almost rather work alone. Perhaps one of my aides would…”

Elladan held up his hand. “Gûrion, this elf was at my side when I found my mother in the orc-dens He carried her out when my hands were shaking too much to do so. I would be shamed if I dared show less courage now than he did then.”

When Gûrion looked pointedly at Aragorn again, Elrohir said, “Estel and he are boon friends and you could not hope to have a better aide.”

“Very well.”

The healer delicately folded back the coverlets.

Aragorn had been helping his father in Rivendell’s infirmary since he had been old enough to run errands and with the fascination of a child had watched his elven father at his dutiful, often bloody work. This long journey alone had tested his endurance of the unfamiliar, the gruesome, and the nightmarish. He had seen his share of broken bodies: people he cared for, his men, Galen, Lalaithien. He had not anticipated this.

Haldir remained insensate during the examination for which Aragorn was relieved, knowing how the proud warrior’s dignity would have suffered being seen in such a vulnerable position. Gûrion was very thorough and felt along every bone, every inch of skin, even running his fingers up through the other elf’s hair to check for skull fractures or head trauma.

For long minutes, the man could not bear to look beneath his friend’s gaunt face but as Gûrion started to unroll bandages and unpack his supplies, he forced himself to push away any personal thoughts and to treat the body beneath his gaze as if it were any other injured warrior he had had to deal with in the past. The marchwarden’s usually pale complexion had a distinctly curdled-milk shade, mottled here and there by the deep blackish patches of blood collecting just below the surface of the skin. Muscles long ill- and under-used sagged, clinging to a wasted, once strongly-toned frame.

Around the collarbone and creeping over the shoulders were inflamed, red furrows, clumsily mended and cruelly reopened: the marks of claws and whiplashes. Darkly bruised ribs arched sharply like the curves of an archer’s bow and two of the long fingers on the right hand were twisted in such a way that Aragorn knew they were broken, the knuckles inflamed and swollen to almost twice the size they should have been. Turning over the starkly blue-veined forearm, Aragorn caught his breath in a sharp hiss. Scabbed over and deeply etched into the forearm muscle was a livid brand shaped like a crude eye.

“By the stars, how did you endure this, mellonnin?” he whispered, his throat tightening hard.

Elladan glanced quickly over at him.

Gûrion passed a freshly filled bowl of steaming, slightly fragrant water over to the ranger, distracting him from his examination.

“Infection will do him no amount of good. Wash up to the elbows, back from the hands, well before you touch him,” the healer ordered, sleeves rolled up and forearms glistening from their own soaking.

The worst of the injuries lay just between the third and fourth rib: a hurried bandage had been taped over it in the haste of the battle’s aftermath. Carefully, Gûrion peeled it back to reveal a puncture wound, low and deep. The black substance Aragorn had noticed before clung to the edges of the raw, partially crusted wound. Long untreated, it had festered like a ripe fruit left overlong in the sun and was by far the injury that merited most of Gûrion’s concern.

He touched the fringe of the mottled flesh and Haldir’s eyes flew open.

“Estel…”

Aragorn jolted in surprise at the sound of his name which had come from neither the healer nor Elladan and bent hurriedly over his friend, his hands still damp. “Haldir? I’m here.”

But the elf wasn’t looking at him. His glazed regard reeled over the ranger’s shoulders and wandered unseeingly around the tent walls, looking at ghosts. “Mustn’t come…Don’t come…The dark bites and freezes in veins. The mallorn tree will grow nigh unto the heavens if left alone, the oak if well-watered reaches half that, and the maple half again as high, the ash…”

“His mind wanders,” Gûrion said, watching the quietly raving elf with a keenly interested eye. He passed a hand above the elf’s face which did not register the movement. “Yet he is not conscious, at least not completely. I’ll need you two to hold him. I may have to cause him some pain and he won’t like that. He is a swordsman, is he?” the healer delicately handled the maimed hand as Aragorn nodded. “These have already begun to mend crookedly. I will need to rebreak and reset them or he cannot hope to handle a sword as well again.”

“I will not let you have him,” though rasping, the marchwarden’s voice retained some of the imperious growl he was renowned for and a flame had kindled in his wide, staring eyes as he spoke over the healer. “You will not have him.”

“Should we answer?” Elladan’s uneasiness was almost palpable as he watched the white figure, transfixed somewhere between horror and fascination.

“He does not know we are here,” Gûrion answered. His eyes narrowed. “However, if he feels threatened and moves, he might do himself more harm than good.” His fingertips brushed the skin of his patient’s arm in an attempt to calm the twitching warrior.

A feral snarl erupted from the injured elf’s chest. At the merest touch, his shoulders bucked up off the pallet and it took all three of their combined strengths to bring him back down again so he would not do himself further damage.

Suddenly Elladan jerked back with a cry of pain, clapping a hand over his opposite wrist. “He bit me!”

“You will do what you like with me, but I will be damned before you have him! Let me go, you—” the raver’s speech devolved into half-intelligible curses and straining breaths as he struggled against his handlers’ relentless grip.

“I’m going to need restraints if he doesn’t calm down!” Gûrion grunted, pinioning the kicking legs.

Aragorn sat frozen, unsure of what to do, his hand half-outstretched. Gûrion and Elladan had pinned wrists and legs but the elf soldier still fought them viciously. Not wanting to hurt his friend, Aragorn dithered uncertainly over the pallet until the elf caught him a smarting crack under the chin with a wrenched-free elbow. Tasting blood from his bitten tongue, the ranger leaned down hard on his friend’s chest, murmuring nonsensical, elvish words, hoping that the sound of his voice and the elf’s native language might quiet the wild spirit.

Torturously long moments dragged by during which Aragorn thought at any minute his arms were going to give way or his heart shatter. But the elf’s struggles began to slow and gradually ceased altogether. Chest heaving raggedly, Haldir slumped exhaustedly under their combined force, his forehead shining with his effort, uninjured fingers twisting in the bedding beneath him.

Aragorn pushed the disheveled, sweat-drenched strands away from his friend’s marble countenance, realizing he was shaking almost as violently and his shoulder wound throbbed with renewed vigor. The elf had clenched his eyelids tightly closed. Something clear and wet leaked from the corners and Aragorn who had never seen the Lothlórien captain cry felt as if his heart had been seized and sundered. His voice was less than steady as he tried to reassure him, “It’s all right, Haldir, it’s all right. I’m right here. I’m right here with you. Shh.”

Almost instinctively, his hand began to move in small, smoothing circles over an unbruised part of the quivering shoulder. His father had often calmed him down in such a fashion when he was a child tormented by night terrors and it worked just as well on injured warriors apparently because Haldir stopped struggling, even relaxing slightly under the ranger’s touch.

“No, Gûrion, don’t,” Aragorn pleaded when he saw the healer seize several lengths of cloth. “He has spent enough of his strength fighting you and he has marks enough from bonds. You do not need to add more.”

Noticing how still his patient had grown under the ranger’s hands, Gûrion relented and picked up Elladan’s wrist. “Well, he took a chunk of flesh from you and no mistake—at least he has some fighting spirit left in him. That gives us some hope. Estel, keep him as calm as you can. Talk to him. It seems to put him at ease better than anything I have. Otherwise, I’ll have to sedate him and I’d rather not. If he regains any semblance of consciousness, he may be able to tell us how best we can help him. Now, for those fingers.”

Aragorn kept his eyes intently on his friend’s face as Elladan and Gûrion set to their grim work. He did not know for how long he knelt there, his knees aching on the hard, unforgiving ground, his shoulder and arm stiffening from the strain…but his good hand never ceased its soft rhythm as the healer cleansed, set, and dressed the horrible injuries inflicted by the month-long imprisonment among the orcs.

After more than an hour, when Haldir seemed to have slipped into a light doze, Aragorn stretched the stiffness out of his back and shoulders, refilled the copper bowl with the fragrant warm water and grabbed a clean towel. Caked dirt and long clotted blood released their insistent cling as the ranger worked to reveal the elf’s true skin underneath. Even more color had drained away—a complexion which had been troubling from the first had gone the white-grey pallor of clay. His eyelids no longer fluttered and his splinted hands lay limp and still.

“He’s quiet now.”

“Good,” Gûrion muttered distractedly, his brow furrowed in deep consideration. He was bent over his patient’s side, his fingers lightly pinching and pressing either side of the suppurating wound to coax pus through the narrow, unhealed slit. “This runs deep. There is an evil in it that I have seen before,” he leaned back on his heels and rinsed his hands. For a long, thoughtful moment watched his patient’s face. “When I was a battle surgeon during the Fornost campaign, I treated many such wounds—often to the life-cost of their bearers. It brings a terrible malady, not wholly of the body or else it might be healed, but of the spirit and the heart. Those who sicken with it—even Elves—fall ever deeper into a dark dream and cold shadow. They do not wake from it.”

“What do you mean by that?” Elladan asked sharply.

Gûrion looked at him almost pityingly. “He is dying.”

When their stricken faces turned towards him, Gûrion felt the need to explain even though it would do little good to assuage their grief. “The physical injuries I had hopes of healing—this injury itself has already begun to knit as you can see. But…something still eats away at him that I have no power to undo.”

Elladan absorbed this news more quickly than Aragorn’s shock-fogged brain and managed to stutter, “H—how long does he have then?”

“I have done what I can. He is obviously strong and may cling to life for some hours yet but—”

“Hours?”

“He is very fortunate to have survived this long.” Gûrion gestured rather uselessly at the carefully applied bandages. “The severity of some of these wounds would have killed a lesser man in days. He has borne them clearly for weeks. It is a cold comfort, perhaps, but at least, he is in the company of friends now. We can make him comfortable.”

“You cannot tell me there is no hope,” Aragorn’s quiet voice cut the healer off like a knife severing a taut string. The ranger hadn’t looked up from his friend’s waxen visage but his jaw tightened in a dour expression Elladan recognized as complete and utter determination. “I will not believe you if you tell me there is no hope.”

Gûrion glanced helplessly at Elladan for assistance but the young elf-lord merely stared back at him so he offered, “There is always hope. But even if, by some miracle, he wakes—there is no knowing what kind of damage a month among orcs and the presence of their foul master has done to his mind.”

When Aragorn did not reply, the elven healer rose with a soft, troubled sigh. “There are others I must tend to. If you should need me…” He ducked slowly out of the tent, leaving an echoing silence in his wake.

Aragorn did not speak and Elladan, stifled by the oppressive silence, took up a position outside the tent while they both began their indeterminate vigil.

“Aragorn?”

The deep, tentative voice roused Aragorn out of a deep contemplation and he raised strained, smoky eyes to the tent entrance where Halbarad stood framed. It was dimmer in the tent than it had been for the deepest part of the night had settled over the camp. Halbarad himself looked worn and stank of pyre-smoke.

“Elladan explained,” the older man offered awkwardly as he sat beside his chief. When he received no flicker of a response, Halbarad stared down at the still form covered again in blankets. He pressed his lips briefly together but the edgy quiet laden with such heaviness seemed to be getting to him.

“Glorfindel is checking on the injured and making his rounds. He’s talking about dismantling the fortress so orcs don’t nest there again. Ivriel’s watching over Rancir just in case though the healer said with decent rest and so long as he kept the wound clean, he should well recover. The old churl didn’t actually argue, I was surprised. Veil and the others bunked up under the trees, most of them got off pretty well against the enemy. They had some fierce fighters among them. At any rate, we should be heading home soon, I guess…” He trailed off into the silence and took a closer look at his chief.

“You look tired.”

Aragorn shook his head, his interlocked fingers resting against his lips, his elbows on his knees.

Halbarad picked up the discarded sling and gave his chieftain a look of reproachful sadness. “That shoulder needs rest.”

Aragorn didn’t even nod his head this time. He didn’t even look around until Halbarad, grasping his good shoulder gently, forced him to turn away from the pallet.

“If you think I’m going to let you waste away here, you’re badly mistaken. I watched your father nearly do it after losing a man dear to him and I did not allow it then. Well, I’m too old a rock to be changed by weathering and I’ll be damned if I let anything happen to you because of this elf,” the older man growled, his grip tightening slightly on the younger man’s shoulder when Aragorn only continued to regard him wearily.

Halbarad licked dry, smoke-chapped lips, surprised by the sheer exhaustion in his chieftain’s eyes. “I am so sorry, Aragorn,” he eased back on his hold. “I would never have wished this on him, you know that.”

“I know.”

“Can I do anything?”

Aragorn shook his head.

With a sigh, Halbarad coaxed his leader’s arm back into the sling. As he meticulously straightened out the slight twists in the strap so that it lay flat, his eyes roved over the injury, his brow darkened.

“How did you come by that anyway? You never said.”

“It was a clean cut. Gûrion said it would mend.”

“Another scar to add to your collection. You’ll surpass mine at this rate.” Halbarad’s mouth twisted in a wry smile and just as quickly faded. “When Elrohir told us you’d been attacked…I don’t mind telling you I feared the worst. Elrohir couldn’t remember who’d set upon you and all the orcs in the place seemed to already be fighting us…”

Something in the older man’s undertone suggested his growing suspicions but Aragorn, his eyes dark and distracted, only shook his head again and repeated, “It will mend.”

Halbarad did not know what there was left to say but, surprisingly, it was his chieftain who broke the silence. “You were mistaken in him. He spared me when the Nazgûl ordered him to slay me. He refused to kill me even though the wraith threatened him with his own death if he did not comply. You were wrong.”

“Glad am I to hear it.”

“You would have had me leave him behind.”

Halbarad heard the warning bells heralding the wrong direction this conversation was taking but had no idea how to diffuse it. “At the time, I—I thought it was for the best.”

His chieftain’s voice had sunk into a hoarse, dangerous timber. “You thought it best to leave him to the mercy of the orcs, to the mercy of those who tortured him?”

“I—”

Aragorn’s hand had balled into a fist and Halbarad drew back slightly, for a moment actually afraid his leader might strike him. This sudden rage was more alarming than the previous lethargy.

“Aragorn, calm down, you’re not—”

“If you had had your way, they would still be torturing him in that keep! Years beyond endurance!” Aragorn had risen to his feet. He was shouting now and scarcely seeming aware of what he was saying as Halbarad edged further back from him, one hand slightly outstretched as though to ward him off. “They would have taken from him the very last inch of himself and all because of your whim! He would have died alone.” His voice cracked and Halbarad dove in.

“Aragorn, I never meant—”

Aragorn’s voice was hard as flint though it trembled slightly. “You unspeakable coward.”

Elladan swept in under the tent entrance and seized his youngest brother around the chest, tugging him sharply away from the older man. He held his brother tight against him despite his attempted struggles and would not release him until the young man stopped fighting. “Aragorn, calm down. You’re overwrought. You know this was not Halbarad’s fault.”

“Are you saying it was Haldir’s?” Aragorn rounded fiercely on him and the elf held up a placating hand.

“That is not what I said. It was no one’s fault. No one’s.” he cupped his brother’s cheek, forcing him to meet his eyes. “We cannot predict the movements of evil and evil things happen to those we care for. It was no one’s fault but ill chance.”

When Aragorn seemed to calm a little more, Elladan with an apologetic glance at Halbarad released him and stepped back toward the tent entrance. “I am going to make some tea. It’ll help. All our nerves are a little…jangled, I fear.”

Aragorn threw himself down beside the pallet again, hiding his face in one hand. Guardedly, Halbarad watched him for a few minutes until the convulsing shoulders eased.

“Aragorn, I never meant that. I never meant that at all. I was wrong; I know I was wrong, I am glad I was wrong,” he was almost pleading for his friend to understand.

Aragorn raised his head slowly. His eyes were bloodshot and his face haggard, making him appear aged far beyond his twenty-odd years. He swallowed thickly. When he next spoke, his voice had lost its alarming edge and held only an immeasurably deep sadness.

“I know, Halbarad.”

Elladan returned a few minutes later, bearing three chipped clay mugs and passed them around. When he came to his adopted brother, he lingered a little. “This will help.”

Aragorn cradled the mug and inhaled the sweet fragrance. It tingled sharp in his nose and for a moment, the dreadful battle, their losses, the blood dried on his clothes and the grief clenching around his heart diminished. He sat in the Hall of Fire again on the cushions scattered about the room, his father’s robes brushing against his idle fingers. He blinked and the lovely sensation remained though he knew he was far from home still.

“Athelas?” he guessed, looking up at his brother questioningly.

“Gûrion found some growing wild not far from here and culled it. It’s been some time—since we left home.”

“It is what Adar gave to Galen…” Aragorn trailed off thoughtfully. He suddenly recalled the words spoken that terrible night when he had witnessed his father in the library tending to the fallen elven warrior who raved with terror and fought with desperate strength until the athelas…His father had explained what had happened, what he had done, what his youngest son could do…

You, Aragorn, are one of the few Dúnedain, of Men who still have the ancient power in your bloodline to do such things as I have just done. To cull the shadow and call those under its sway back.

“Under the shadow,” he murmured half to himself. He glanced up and caught the eye of his brother who had evidently heard the soft comment. “How many leaves did Gûrion say he had gathered?”

“Several handfuls at least. Why?”

“And the hot water for the tea—is there some left?”

“Yes. What are you thinking, Estel?”

“I’m not sure yet. Go ask Gûrion for more of those leaves and bring me the rest of the water. Halbarad, get me a lantern, as bright as you can find. Just do it. Swiftly.”

Neither of them argued.

Elladan swept back under the tent flap in mere moments, a bowl of steaming water in one hand and a small, leather pouch in the other containing the drying leaves. “I think something of Haldir must be rubbing off on you, Estel—you already have acquired his bark when giving orders.”

“I hope you will be able to tell him that—he’d laugh,” Aragorn accepted bowl and packet from his brother and turned the lantern wick up so a bright, unsteady light shone full on Haldir’s face, tingeing it a deceptively healthy bronze. Crushing the leaves and steeping them in the hot water, the man waited until the aromatic steam filled the whole tent and brightened his eyes with new resolve. Unsure of what was actually going to happen, he lifted the elf’s undamaged hand gently between both of his own, delicately chafing the chilled skin to give it a semblance of warmth. Resting his rough palm lightly on the elf’s brow, he closed his eyes.

“Haldir.” He could not think what he would do should this last effort fail. “Haldir…”

The hand on the elf’s clammy forehead began to absorb the chill and his eyes floated closed. Darkness deeper than the mere shadows caused by the fluttering lamp deepened behind his shut eyelids. It reminded him almost of the dizzy sensation between wakefulness and sleep except…A frown knotted between his brows and he adjusted his sliding grip. Something brushed against his mind like the touch of a familiar hand but Aragorn shuddered and almost pulled back from it. It reminded him too much of the dusty crimson and gold room.

He could feel the malevolent will even now, remote but all the more potent for its rage knew no boundaries, no distance. It tore at him, trying to rip him free of the one it sought to claim but Aragorn only tightened his hold, blackness swirling before his eyes as he struggled against it.

“Estel?” Dimly, as if through a tunnel, he heard Elladan worriedly call his name but he could not afford to distract himself by answering it.

The scent of the athelas strengthened and a bright flare of light erupted behind his eyes, gradually fading and softening into gentle blackness. Exhausted beyond his endurance, head heavy and swimming, Aragorn slumped forward against his friend's icy shoulder.