This version Beta’d by Lindorien, Lyllyn, and the incomparable Theresa Green. With the earnest hope of not offending those with grammar and spelling bumps. Plot and characterisation bumps are a matter of opinion, let me know yours.

AU Fourth Age fusion of book and movie-verse. Set ninety eight years into Aragorn’s reign.

A:L:G  OC  Friendship fic. Not slash. PG for violence and some adult dilemmas in later chapters.

Angst/Adventure

Previously posted as Unbinding the Box

Adagio 1/9

Dawn broke red over the kingdom of Gondor and, after ninety-eight years of enforced peace and muscular justice, this day arrived with no more portent than a promise of spring showers.

On the walls of Minas Tirith an energetic breeze cracked the flags displaying the White Tree and the Green Leaf of Ithilien. Birds startled away as the mithril-bound city gates swung open.

Horns announced the official start of the day and a long queue of tradesmen and workers pressed forward to enter. A jingling company of horse and men forced the throng to hug the wall as they in their turn left the city, bound for the exercise grounds on the battle plain in front of the city between the rivers Erui and Anduin.

Another small group rode out on the heels of the troop. Those in the black and silver livery halted and waited patiently, acting as a breakwater to the flow of incomers, as their charges paused to assess the day.

Legolas Greenleaf, Prince of Ithilien, heir of Eryn Lasgalen and long friend of Elessar Telcontar stretched his back and ostentatiously filled his lungs with the brisk spring air, all the while rolling his eyes towards the king.

Aragorn glanced at his antics and suppressed the smile that wanted to soften his expression.

 "My city is not stuffy, Legolas. You and my wife have so filled her streets and parks with greenery that the very beasts of the field abandon the countryside to dwell here."

The Elf snorted out the last of his exaggerated breath in a merry laugh and then urged his mount forward to walk alongside his liege.

The wind blew strands of Legolas' pale hair against Aragorn's cheek and the king brushed his hand up in a gesture practised by the habit of wearing his own hair long. He had yet to acquire comfort with the shorter hairstyle, fashion, and his wife, dictated for the lords of Gondor.

Mischief crossed the prince's expression as he sized up Aragorn's dignity and the quality of his horse.

" To the river?"

Aragorn thought fleetingly of the morning round of political meetings he had planned to attend, of his less than youthful body, and then bracingly of Eldarion who could manage the meetings.

With a feral grin, he urged his favourite horse into a gallop to catch the flying tail of the fleeing grey.

Didn't the blood of Numenor run in his veins?

The two riders and the four guards reached the cavalry column and separated to race down either side - Cheers and halloos from the ranks followed them as they outdistanced the troop and galloped over the exercise grounds to the river.

Legolas reached the water first and wheeled his horse around whooping with laughter as he watched Aragorn thunder up.

Finally his friend wore a matching grin, and tilted his head ungrudgingly to the victorious Elf.

Legolas splashed his horse merrily through the shallows and paralleled Aragorn as the man made his more sedate way towards the now manoeuvring solders.

Aragorn, conscious of his tack if no longer his dignity, paced the Elf further up the bank.

"Gimli would have hated you doing that," Aragorn finally brought up the absence that had been nagging at him since last night.

Legolas laughed abruptly, and then frowned a little, diverting his gaze over the river to the dappled shadows running across the patchwork of cultivated fields and vineyards that decorated the hills of South Ithilien.

"I miss him also." The Elf glanced at Aragorn, and then away again. "He last visited me at the beginning of winter. You have seen him since?"

The frown returned to Aragorn's face. He halted his horse and studied the Elf lord in front of him.

"I have not, Legolas. Since he finished my gates and became more involved in governing Aglarond, it is common that I may not see him for a sun round, or more. But have you had no word, surely you have not fallen out after all this time?"

"We fell foul of our races' differences, Estel."

Legolas urged his horse out of the river and up the bank to join Aragorn.

There he dismounted and pulled a hank of dry grass from the edge of the parade ground to wipe over his animal's wet sides.

Aragorn also dismounted and loosened his horse's girth, before handing the animal off to the nearest bodyguard. The King signalled the four soldiers to move off a few paces and give them privacy.

"Aragorn, when you were raised in Elrond's house," Legolas risked a glance, Aragorn nodded encouragingly. "Did you become familiar with the custom of feast-day friends?"

Aragorn replied without inflection, "It is a custom observed in Rivendell amongst the un-bonded elves. Yes, I know of it."

Legolas kept his focus on some mud spatters, rubbing at them energetically. He switched to speaking Sindarin.

"Have you ever met the warrior, Minuial?"

Both Aragorn's eyebrows went up at this but he replied easily enough in his cradle tongue.

"Thrandruil's march-warden? Elbereth, Legolas. She is just about the most frightening Elf woman I have ever met; and that includes my grandmother-in-law, Galadriel. She has to be the one who wrote the book on how to be a superior haughty Elf. I swear she gave Haldir, blessed be his memory, lessons."

Legolas rested his forehead on the side of his horse.

Aragorn refrained from sounding the astounded whistle that was burning for expression.

Slightly muffled by horsehide Legolas muttered, "Minuial and I, we've been feast-day friends, on and off you understand, for about two yen, Estel."

"Ah," said Aragorn, dumbfounded.

Two yen equalled maybe two hundred and eighty eight years as measured by mortals like him.

Legolas risked a glance at the suddenly silent man, took in his frozen expression and graced him with a rueful smile.

He chuckled suddenly and continued, "And yes, you remember her well enough. She has," he paused in a bewildered way searching for the right words.

"Prejudices?" supplied Aragorn gently.

The two men let their eyes speak for a moment before Legolas turned back to his currying. The silence lengthened.

Legolas finally allowed his horse to wander towards the others, then sat down on the grassy riverbank and followed the progress of a cargo barge as it made its measured way down the Anduin.

Aragorn dropped down beside him.

Legolas continued to avoid eye contact as he continued. "The festival of star-finding fell in sun-waning last year, do you remember?"

Aragorn nodded and then smiled reminiscently.

Finding and naming stars was the traditional six-day task. When it fell in winter, ritual allowed the participants many furs and ample fortifying drafts of wine.

He and Arwen had had a memorable star-finding last year.

He looked sidelong at his friend. "Minuial?"

Legolas nodded glumly, and once again fell silent, forcing Aragorn to fish.

"And Gimli?"

Legolas slumped as if the weight of Middle-earth had fallen on his shoulders.

"He turned up on one of his visits the after the last night of the ritual, and came bursting into my rooms in his usual way, full of some new vein of gems and hardly expecting me to still be abed in the full day."

The Elf sighed mightily again and finally looked earnestly at Aragorn.

 "He was so shocked, Estel, I swear I thought he would melt from blushing so hard. And then Minuial was reaching for her weapons and Gimli was backing out and…"

He dropped his head in his hands.

Aragorn finally ventured a comradely hand on Legolas' shoulder and strenuously tried to suppress the venal feeling that he would have given a kingdom's ransom to be a fly on that wall.

He looked at his friend and relented a little, "And when you tried to explain to Gimli?"

"At first he was full of teasing and congratulations, thinking that I must soon to be wed and then, when I finally managed to explain, he became cold, as if I was acting dishonourably against Minuial. You know how he esteems women, putting all on some high pedestal."

Aragorn did know. Well enough to know that when he had got over his shock and embarrassment Gimli would have rationalised the incident as just another race difference.

So, the question remained. Why Legolas had not heard from him?

Again, Legolas was not finished, "and then Minuial would have her say in our disagreement."

He shook his head, even now disbelieving how appalling that day had been.

"Aragorn, she accused him of being jealous, taunted him about wishing for that intimacy that she had of me. Can you believe it?"

Legolas seemed to shrink again in remembered horror.

Aragorn, fascinated, could not help exclaiming. "What did he do?"

"He just glared at me, then at her, turned on his heel and left. And I, great fool that I am, stayed to quarrel with her, rather than go after him. And I have had not a word, nor news of him for the whole cold winter since, nor even now in stirring."

Legolas finally fell silent again, and Aragorn let him be for a moment.

He found himself nearly equally dismayed, but hardly surprised that barrack room surmise had finally managed to reach the ears of the pair that Middle-earth had been gossiping about for nearly a century.

"And will you go to him now, and make amends?"

Legolas examined his hands then glanced sideways at his king.

“Would you?”

Aragorn gave an involuntary bark of laughter.

Legolas' affronted glare would have stripped paint but it merely glanced off his friend, who grasped his hand and pulled him to his feet in one vigorous move.

 “I would. I would drop all my burdens of rule, forget the twin kingdoms of Gondor and Arnor, cast off my responsibilities to my subjects and Arwen and travel into the mountains."

Legolas looked at the river, drawing elven reserve back over his face and body like a cloak.

 Aragorn shook his head. " My friend. I'll write to him. See what my poor diplomacy can do."

He was rewarded by Legolas’ smile. It warmed him.

Aragorn turned to collect his mount from the guard. Legolas sprang lightly to the back of his own, and waited patiently for his friend, raising a mocking eyebrow at this slowness.

The two moved off to meet with the captain of Aragorn's cavalry, to complete an at least cursory inspection, since that was the official reason for Aragorn's escaping of his kingly duties this morning.

Throndar, veteran of many campaigns, with both his king and his king's ally, limped energetically to where the two waited for him, leaving the wheeling companies in the able hands of his iron-lunged sergeant major.

"Sire?" Throndar bowed stiffly with his hand on his heart, and suddenly the poignant brevity of most men's lives caught Aragorn. Seeing this fifty five year old suddenly as he had been on another spring day thirty years before, new to the command of his eored and eager for the commencement of the campaign that eventually led to the subduing of the Haradrim.

He returned the salute. "How goes the training, Captain?"

Throndar's craggy, battle scarred, features pulled themselves into an even more fearful scowl.

"The usual crop of milk-sops and mummy's boys, Sire. Wet themselves the first time they have to face a real enemy, no doubt. Don't know if I'll ever make them warriors."

Aragon suppressed an unmannerly guffaw. Force commanders had voiced the same complaint in his hearing since the days of Helm's Deep more than three quarters of a century before.

In the background the maligned riders executed mock charges and retreats to signals given by military trumpets. The cohorts exhibited the sort of tight discipline that Aragorn would have given up whole territories for in earlier decades.

Aragorn clapped the stocky man on his mailed shoulder. "The more things change, the more they stay the same, aye, Throndar. Carry on man."

He watched as his Captain stumped asymmetrically back to his reviewing post and turned to Legolas to share his amusement. Legolas however was peering into the middle distance, caught by movement half a league away on the great west road crossing the Pelannor Field leading to Minas Tirith's gates.

"A company of men and dwarves, flying the horse standard of Rohan."

Aragorn shaded his eyes and looked to where Legolas could see clearly with his Elf stretched vision. It was useless of course; all he could make out was the expanding jumble of homes and businesses that was filling the area between the walls and the Rammas as his city outgrew its corset of protective walls. He gave up the effort and interrogated his friend instead.

"And the banner of Aglarond?" he hoped that all might be resolved if Gimli had taken this chance to make first contact.

"Nay."

The light appeared to dim around the Elf, merely the result of a passing cloud, but eloquent anyway.

Aragorn tried to sound enthusiastic. "Shall we go find out what we can do for our good allies of the Mark anyway? Perhaps they carry news."

Suiting action to word, they made their way back to the junction of the west and eastern roads and joined the throng making its way into and out of the city now the day had found its feet.

"This congestion has become a problem?" Legolas commented.

They had negotiated about half the distance to the gates, weaving their way between stalled wagons, carts, and traders on foot towing pack animals.

Aragorn shrugged a little helplessly as they inched their way past an incoming and outgoing set of wains that were blocking almost the whole width of the highway.

"Eldarion has been trying to get me to take his plans for a out-of-wall market seriously for years." Aragon paused, trying to get his mind around some of the myriad changes prosperity was bringing to his erstwhile besieged city, finally he shook his head. "It's not usually this bad, I think."

"A second gate would help, would it not?" Legolas asked.

Aragorn knew he had a battle hardened resistance to any scheme that might weaken Minas Tirith's defences, but Eldarion, to an extent the child of peace, championed schemes designed to enhance the city's commercial rather than military future, so Aragorn eyed his friend

"Has my son, the town planner, had your ear again?"

 Legolas raised an innocent eyebrow at him, causing Aragorn to snort cynically.

The riders reached a relatively clear space of road and trotted forward, Aragorn standing briefly in his stirrups to try to see over the heads of a knot of people in front.

The spring breeze freshened and blew a ragged pile of straw, dung and the tattered remains of a flattened basket under the feet of Aragorn's horse.

 The animal shied.

The horse's sudden movement frightened a young woman carrying a squawking cage of hens, and she in turn nearly pitched an elderly man off the road into the ditch.

Quickly getting control of his animal the King exchanged dismayed glances with Legolas and they both dismounted.

Aragorn handed off his horse to the nearest guard, Legolas spoke in his horse's ear and she followed meekly. The remaining two guards moved up to flank the King and the Elf, Aragorn ignored them, as he had learned to do over the years.

Aragorn paused to sooth the ruffled dignity of the two pedestrians, and then they pressed on foot until they finally reached the back of the crowd blocking the road in front of the arch of the gate.

Aragorn waved Legolas forward and the two men wormed their way towards the front of the crowd.

As they came nearer, the sounds resolved themselves into a donkey in full voice, muffled shouts and an unidentified clacking.

The way magically opened for the Elf. Awe, even in Gondor, made people shift into spaces that really didn't exist, and some women, that Legolas moved with a touch and his gentle smile, would remember his face for the rest of their lives.

No one noticed the King treading close to his heels, until the ungentle elbows of the King's guard made way for him.

Finally, they found the source of the blockage.

A donkey, harnessed to a compact but serviceable wagon loaded with waving green saplings and herbs in now teetering pots. Firmly wedged in the deep rain gutter the wagon's far wheel slewed the vehicle round sideways, one of the shafts entangled with the great chain that opened the gate. The net result was that the wagon was half wedged in the archway and half hanging over the ten-foot drop formed by the ramp leading into the city.

Aragorn nudged the man standing beside him and asked, "What happened?"

 The man did not turn his head, so did not realise the identity of his questioner.

"The donkey took fright at the great party from Rohan that marched in just before and started backing," the man confided without taking his eyes off the entertaining spectacle in front of him.

"Now the guard want to push the wagon off the road to clear the way but the little fellow there, he's having none of it."

 The man chuckled a bit and then cheered as another resounding clack hit the air.

Aragorn also turned his attention to the front and was in time to see a short figure holding off a determined ring of gate guards with a staff that, despite being half as tall again as his diminutive self, he was wielding with a skill and grace that looked both deadly and elven.

He was a hobbit, red in the face with anger.

"No. You shall not be tipping nor breaking nor nothing else. Leave me alone, Bess and I we'll sort it."

The donkey chose that moment to plunge and kick at one of the soldiers who was trying to go to her head, another guard made a determined swipe at the staff only to be met by a swift and accurate attack to the shins followed by a knock on the head that made his helmet ring.

The crowd roared with laughter, and Aragorn could see that the guard captain, a man grim in his loyalty and not known for his sense of humour at the best of times, was about to lose his slender grasp on his patience and order some rather more lethal solution to the blocked gate dilemma.

"Hold!"

Aragorn cried in his command voice, honed on a century and a half of battlefields. He strode out of the crowd, suddenly the focus of all eyes.

The guard captain spun round, obviously ready to have a piece of whoever thought he could do his job, then gasped and paled as he saw who was bearing down on him.

"Sire!"

He bowed deeply, and suddenly, like the rustle of leaves in a forest, the whisper went round the crowd.

"The King."

There was a flurry of hands on hearts and bowed heads, followed by a melting away of the idle gawkers.

Legolas meanwhile had moved near the donkey's head and started murmuring to her, distracting her from her panic, and that left a red faced, blond running to grey haired hobbit, bristling in the sudden quiet, clutching his staff with his two hands, ready to take on the world.

Aragorn dismissed the gate guard with a movement of his eyes, and then turned his attention to the small person in front of him.

He bowed, "Elessar Telcontar, King of Gondor and Arnor. You are welcome Perian, even though it would appear otherwise."

The hobbit's eyes widened at this introduction and by the end he was hanging off his staff with his head bowed in mortification.

"'M, sorry." He said in a small voice.

"Me Da always said my temper would get me into trouble, and now it has. So shamed he would be."

Bright damp anguished blue eyes looked up at Aragorn.

 “'M Tolman Gardener, come to visit me birthplace and the great library, and now all I've done is make trouble."

A single tear ran down the weather-beaten cheek as the hobbit bowed miserably to his king.

Aragorn ran a quelling hand over his own face to make sure his expression was suitably grave, because truthfully the pathetic little figure in front of him did not deserve his laughter. The last time he had seen Tom Gardener he had been a babe in arms, a welcome surprise arriving during Sam and Rose's visit to his city seventy-seven years before.

"Welcome Tolman, twice, thrice welcome, from my heart."

He moved closer and placed a friendly hand on the hobbit's shoulder.

" Come let us see if we cannot disentangle your good beast and then find a place for you at my table. It must be time for second breakfast at least and I am sure hobbits have not changed so radically since last they visited that you are not hungry."

Tom grinned a little at this gentle teasing, then turned briskly back to his wagon.

Legolas had not only calmed the donkey but also appeared to have talked the enormous link of chain into relinquishing its hold on the wagon's shaft.

Aragorn gathered up a couple of the gate guards, those not nursing broken heads or shins, and the remaining two body guards and, between them, they manhandled the wagon back on the road.

With the Elf handling the reins and directing the besotted donkey it was not long before the wagon finally cleared the arch and entered the first ring of the city.

Once safely clear of the gate tunnel Tom swung nimbly up onto the seat beside Legolas, turned and bowed most respectfully and introduced himself again, but this time in flawless Sindarin.

Elf and King could not resist a shared eyebrow, even as the Elf returned the favour.

TBC

This version Beta’d by Lindorien, Lyllyn, and the incomparable Theresa Green. With the earnest hope of not offending those with grammar and spelling bumps. Plot and characterisation bumps are a matter of opinion, let me know yours.

AU Fourth Age fusion of book and movie-verse. Set ninety eight years into Aragorn’s reign.

A:L:G  OC  Friendship fic. Not slash. PG for violence and some adult dilemmas in later chapters.

Adventure

Previously posted as Unbinding the box

TBC

Adagio 2/9

"Would it please you if I directed Bess?"

Legolas tilted his head at Aragorn, who was pacing the wagon with his two guards, then Tolman, who was still sitting beside him and looking around at the vast paved plaza that backed the main gates.

Tom could see a carved stone fountain shooting jets of water merrily into the air, and, at the back of the open space, a mass of rhododendrons clinging grimly to the almost bare rock that formed the root of the Hill of Guard.

To the right, and left, a myriad of streets branched off into the city; some broad, some narrow.

The pedestrian and wheeled traffic crossed and re-crossed the square, flowing around the fountain with the ordered, but bewildering, complexity of an opened anthill.

"Please, my Lord " begged the hobbit.

With a cluck of his tongue Legolas drove the cart around the fountain and into one of the wide curved avenues paralleling the walls.

Aragorn was content to stride beside them as he had his doubts about giving Bess any extra burdens in the zigzag haul ahead. Aragorn's two missing guards caught up with them and brought another foursome from the gate guard to march behind.

Leaving Legolas to concentrate on the reins Aragorn occupied himself with pointing out buildings of interest to the rubbernecking hobbit as they picked their way along the stall-lined street.

Colourful piles of fruit and vegetables from every land were piled in pyramids, sometimes half across the pedestrian ways; the noise of hawkers and town criers was nearly deafening.

Tom could smell fresh bread, baking meats and ale as they passed the district's many hostelries.

Tubs and flowerbeds of cheerful spring flowers grew on any spare bit of land formed by the wedge shaped meeting of roads or green space left between buildings. Some even trailed from baskets swinging in the breeze in front of guesthouses and restaurants.

"Look," exclaimed Tom, pointing excitedly. "New Lampwright's Street."

The business-lined alley wound away towards the wall.

"Uncle Pippin told me about that street. There was a guest house down it where all the boys stayed."

Aragorn nodded, "Almost all of this level has been re-built since the war, but people like the old names."

As they neared the gate to the second level the crowds of basket-carrying women, darting children, laden men and yapping dogs started to thin.

The avenue became lined with warehouses, labelled with signs in the various languages of middle earth.

They passed a building with "Fine Wines of Ithilien," lettered in graceful tengwar script, and Legolas laconically returned the salutes of the three elves unloading a wain stacked with barrels.

"Good vintage this year?" Aragorn enquired with a certain vested interest.

Not fourteen twenty, but it'll serve." Legolas replied evenly.

Then they passed through the first gate and began traversing the second level.

Older buildings lined the way, facades showing evidence of Dwarven repairs.

Down side roads Tom could hear the industrious sound of tapping and hammering muffled by the intervening buildings.

Shop fronts and signs advertised clothes, money lending businesses and weapons for the less frantic and better-dressed foot traffic.

The party clopped through the first, longest tunnel piercing the Great Hill of Guard then switched back shortly after to traverse the third and fourth residential levels of the city.

Tom heard the drone of students reciting from two or three large buildings as they passed, and considered that now at least he knew why they had lost the occasional escort of urchins that had followed them on the first and second level.

On the fifth level the way ran for a space near the rim of the ring wall and there was space set aside for a lookout platform.

Legolas felt that Bess needed a rest before the last pull up to the citadel, so they pulled out of the flow of traffic.

 Aragorn and Tom walked over to the low wall and looked at the long view. They could see across the Pelennor, up to Cair Andros and down past Harlond. In the far distance showers misted the land as they fingered their way across the landscape

Tom sighed, "Me Da always said it would be like this."

Aragorn made an interrogative sound.

Tom continued, "Like you've come home. Yet found home stranger than imagining."

Tom waved at the massive stone works around them, the crenulations on the top of the Hill of Guard one level above, the steadily more magnificent homes and gardens, the view.

"Its all a bit much, really."

Aragorn had a feeling he had once known how Tom felt.

He looked fondly at the hobbit then asked, "Tell me, how fares your family, Master Tolman?"

Tom shot him a startled glance then grinned. 

"Are you sure you want to know, my Lord? Remember, I have six brothers and an equal number of sisters and I have been told, occasionally," he paused to stick his chin in the air and looked down his nose at his King in a parody of Elven hauteur, "that the doings of Hobbits can be both interminable and enervating."

"Nay."

Aragorn waved his hand in negation.

"I now have only infrequent correspondences, usually from Fastred or the Thain, and of that little informs me of the doings of the Gardeners. Since your father's passing I feel sadly ignorant about the doings of the Shire."

Tolman smiled shyly, but shook his head a little at this last.

 "But I have been out of the shire myself for most of the last twenty years, my Lord."

He looked up and saw Aragorn's face falling so rallied himself. 

"I did visit, before I set out on this trip."

He noticed the lightening of Aragorn's expression so continued with more confidence.

"I met up with the Gondorians, that is Daisy and Primrose, who live in Bag End now and look after Bilbo. He was injured in that last battle against the bandits that were hiding in the Trollshaws. I don't think Uncle Merry ever forgave himself for that you know."

Aragorn nodded wisely, but it was news to him, and he had thought he had known Merry well.

"Bilbo stays pretty cheerful though," continued Tolman, "and Ruby and Robin came over from Crickhollow and Michael Delving to have a party to see me off."

He paused again.

Aragorn asked, "The Gondorians?"

Tom blushed. "Sorry, my Lord. That's what all the younger children call themselves, the ones who travelled to your city with my Ma and Da when I was born."

Aragorn smiled, recalling earlier times.

Legolas joined them then, having used the break, and the other two's distraction, to investigate the contents of Tom's wagon.

"Master Tolman, would you tell me something of your plants? I recognise only about half of those you carry and some of those speak strangely to me."

The light of passion leapt into Tom's homely features.

"Ah, my Lord. You behold the fruit of over two decade's work. The Elves of Imladris have been helping me with me Da's writings, and since the Lord Celeborn has joined us you would not believe the knowledge we have retrieved from deep in the Lord Elrond's archives."

Eagerly he bustled over to his wagon and nearly tipped himself upside down as he rooted for something hidden on the tray.

"Look!" He came up triumphant, clutching a clay pot in both hands.

"It's Athelas," Aragorn stated.

Slightly disappointed following such an enthusiastic build up.

"But, my Lord, this is no ordinary plant. Here, take this tiny leaf and crush it."

Aragorn obeyed, and suddenly the whole air that surrounded them sang with the intensity of the smell.

Legolas swayed for a moment as if he might faint, and had to grab at the side of the wagon to stay upright.

Tom breathed in as if he could fill his lungs like balloons and float off the wall.

Aragorn felt an invigorating tingle in his fingertips, and minor aches and pains, so familiar they had ceased to be noticed, fled his form and made him feel for a space as he had as a young man before all his trials had begun.

Gradually the scent dissipated.

"Whew." Tom looked wide-eyed at the King. " 'The Hands of the Healer' really do amplify the effect, my Lord."

Just then, flying up from the fourth level, and bursting over their heads like a cloud of tumbling leaves, a flock of screaming gulls filled the air, twisting and swooping after food carried by one. Driven into the city by the lure of middens and spring storms at sea.

The Elf, the man and the hobbit all ducked, the guard sprang to attention, and Bess let out a startled bray. As soon as the birds had come, they were gone again, blown by wind and wing further up the hill over the Houses of Healing.

Aragorn and Tolman stood up, but the Elf remained crouched on all fours in the lee of the wagon, his golden hair falling forward like a curtain to hide his face, his posture rigid.

"Legolas!" Aragorn stepped quickly to his side and dropped to one knee. Gently he tilted the fair face back, enough to see his friend was absent behind his dreaming eyes.

"Is it the sea-longing?"

Tom's terse enquiry, brisk at his shoulder, caused Aragorn to nod involuntarily. Aragorn patted gently at his friend's cheeks in an effort to rouse him, to no effect.

Tom leapt into his wagon, quickly found what he wanted and approached Aragorn with another plant. Carefully he broke off one of the lumpy, blue, lavender-like flowers and then, after eyeing his King for a doubtful second, crushed the flower under Legolas' nose himself.

Awareness snapped back into Legolas' eyes, and he fell back heavily, ending up sitting square on the ground looking up at Aragorn and Tom with an expression of extreme outrage on his face.

"Elfbane! You crushed Elfbane under my nose."

He coughed, blinking his eyes, which were watering unattractively.

Aragorn looked at Tom, and then at the affronted Elf, clapped Tom on the back led him towards Bess' head to allow Legolas a moment to collect himself.

Bess made a valiant attempt at swiping the plant, but Tom was wise to her ways and calmly handed it to the King whilst finding a morsel in his pocket for his companion of the road.

He glanced back at Legolas, who was on his feet and looking anywhere but at them, and then leaned conspiratorially towards Aragorn to whisper.

"Please, my Lord, whatever you do don't tell him, in the Shire, its known as Dog's Bane."

Aragorn replied equally sotto voice, "And you learned that little trick from..?"

"Elrohir, my Lord."

Tom twinkled a look up at his King, and then walked round the donkey to climb back up beside Legolas, who was sitting in the driver's seat but acknowledging no one.

"Why am I not surprised?"

Aragorn mused to himself as he followed the wagon up to the Royal Stables on the sixth level.

Legolas, now fully himself again, masterfully swung the wagon through the gates and into the Royal Mews and they clattered over the cobbles to finally stop by a hitching post near the stable wall.

Bess brayed mournfully at the Elf's back as Aragorn's efficient stable crew took charge of the equipage.

Tom looked worriedly at his plants and lingered near the wagon as Aragorn and Legolas moved away a few steps.

"Are you all right?" Aragorn detained Legolas with a hand on his arm.

The Elf paused, and then bowed his head.

"Bad timing Estel. The power of the athelas stripped me of all my defences, and then the gulls," he shook his head lightly, and then met Aragorn's eye again. "I am well."

Aragorn doubted the truth of that, but had no answers for his friend. The last thing he could bear was the thought of losing one of the last of the companions of his youth. In fact he could hardly bear to think on it, despite his conscience, which urged him to let him go.

"Sire!" came a shout.

They both looked around. Running down the broad carved steps of one of the buildings facing the yard there came a burly man dressed in the black and silver livery of the citadel.

Aragorn returned the man's hail. "Duilin. What brings you to me?"

The man jogged up to them, one arm in his surcoat as he attempted to find the trailing sleeve.

"Sire, your son bade me find you, in haste, as you see."

Aragorn put out a hand as if to help him into his jacket but Duilin flinched away. Finally he set himself to rights, and then bowed somewhat belatedly first to Aragorn and then to Legolas.

"The party from Rohan."

"Yes, we saw them arriving, what tidings, Duilin?"

The man's face fell.

"I'm sorry, Sire. He just asked me to find you, and the Lord of Ithilien."

He looked up, eager to serve, "Shall I go and ask him, Sire."

Aragorn did grab his arm this time and endured the man's involuntary jerk.

"Hold, Duilin. We will make our way to him with all speed and find out. Where are they?"

"In the second council chamber, Sire. At least that is where I left him."

The worried expression returned to the man's face and before he could ask again whether to go check, Aragorn forestalled him.

"Duilin, since your errand is so rapidly fulfilled, would you take on a task for me instead?"

The man's face lit up with eager resolve.

Clapping his hand to his heart he exclaimed enthusiastically, "Anything, Sire."

Aragorn indicated Tom.

"Would you please make sure our guest has all he needs to care for his plants and dispose of them to his satisfaction, then help him with his belongings. I think the Shire House will be suitable for his guesting, do you know it?"

Duilin nodded as eagerly as a puppy and bowed to the halfling.

Aragorn turned to the hobbit.

"Tom, I would see you at supper this evening if you are willing, meanwhile I leave you in Duilin's capable hands. I am afraid my duties have found me. Duilin?"

The man turned anxiously back to his King, and Aragorn suppressed a sigh.

"Take Master Tolman to the kitchen very soon as I know he will be hungry and I promised him a meal, if not several."

"Yes Sire. Leave it to me, Sire."

 The man hurried over to his new charge and the other two cut across the stable yard heading for the second council chamber.

Legolas watched Aragorn intently as they strode towards the white building. Eventually Aragorn's control broke.

"What?"

Legolas looked satisfied.

"A little jumpy, your man?" he jerked his head back indicating Duilin, who was now enthusiastically emptying Tolman's wagon.

Aragorn's mouth set in a straight line.

 "He was kidnapped out of Belfalas, when he was hardly grown, and chained to an oar bench of an Umbar Corsair for two years."

Aragorn's look became even grimmer.

"It amazes me that he is not homicidal. I can forgive him his flinches. It's his gratitude I find harder to take."

Legolas closed his eyes briefly, and decided to not even bother trying to work out the logic that made Aragorn feel responsible for the actions of the most vicious group of pirates ever to trouble Middle-earth. It sufficed that it happened in Gondor, in his reign.

Since Aragorn's leadership led to the eventual vanquishing of the pirates, Legolas could understand why Duilin might feel grateful

The two friends quickly reached the colonnaded portico of the second council chamber and Aragorn returned the salute of the door guards, who snapped to attention as they approached.

The black and silver-clad guard on the left turned from his liege and slid back a small panel in the door.

"They are here, my Lord," he announced softly to someone inside.

The door opened smoothly and silently, just enough to allow Aragorn's Steward, Faramir's son, Cirion, to slide out

He met his King's eye with palpable relief.

"Sire." He bowed and then turned to Legolas. " My Lord Legolas."

He gathered the two of them up, walking them towards the side entrance that led into the warren of rooms that supported the Council Chamber.

Once inside and into one of the comfortably furnished antechambers, Cirion cleared his throat, started to fidget with his chain of office and visibly swallowed before finding the courage to look Legolas in the eye.

"My Lord of Ithilien. The delegation from Rohan have levelled an accusation that I," he turned a helpless look to his King, "and your son, Sire, find difficult to believe."

He inched closer to Aragorn like a child sheltering behind a parent before completing his question.

"My Lord Legolas, do you know the current whereabouts of the Dwarf Lord, Gimli, the Lord of Aglarond?"

He looked at the Elf hopefully for a second, then let his face fall as he realised that Legolas was no wiser than he was.

" Sire?" He turned less hopefully to his King, and then sighed heavily as he saw his expression.

Aragorn and Legolas met eyes briefly in dismay and turned back to Cirion who seemed to shrink into himself. 

Gravely, he said, "Then, my Lords. I think we may have a problem."

00000

Arwen heard Legolas' outraged shout echo down the stone corridor as she hurried to join her husband.

She had personally settled both the human and dwarven members of the party from Rohan into suitable guest quarters. Quite deliberately using her beauty and concern to overawe them, she managed to get away with the promise of another audience for them as soon as Aragorn was apprised of their concerns.

She looked over her shoulder at her son, who was trailing her by a step or two, still initialling a sheaf of documents that his secretary thrust at him as he moved quickly to pace his mother.

The two shared a look.

"It would appear Cirion has found the Lord of Ithilien," Arwen remarked dryly.

Eldarion finally worked his way to the bottom of the pile and waved the scribe away. The man vanished quickly into one of the many rooms flanking the council chamber.

"I would say you are correct, Mother."

Eldarion looked far too young to be as shrewd as he had become in the politics of Minas Tirith.

"And I would wager, from the sound of him, that he is as convinced by the charges as we were. "

Finally they reached the carven door behind which both Arwen and Eldarion could hear the sounds of urgent argument.

One of Arwen's ever present handmaids opened the door for the royal pair and dropped a respectful curtsey as they entered the room like a fresh wind, momentarily stalling the intense discussion that was going on in the front of the empty fireplace.

"My Lord."

Arwen swept towards Aragorn and took the hand he held out for her, then turned her brilliant gaze onto the glowering Elf standing across the room.

"Legolas, is this not the most ridiculous thing we have heard for an age? "

Eldarion bowed slightly to his father and then to Legolas, and then dropped heavily into one of the upholstered armchairs placed catty corner about the room.

He smiled wryly at Cirion who looked so pale he could pass for a wraith.

Sighing, Eldarion took off his mithril coronet and rubbed absently at the pink marks left on his pale skin by his badge of office.

"Father, let Cirion sit down before he falls down."

Aragorn looked startled, then waved permission at his Steward and then took a seat himself on a long sofa with Arwen.

The King looked across the room at Legolas, who was still bristling.

"Sit down, Legolas," he said. "Let us hear more of this tale from Eldarion."

Eldarion looked at Cirion. "How far did you get?"

"As far as accusing my friend. A member of the Fellowship, and arguably one of the truest beings in Middle-earth, of abducting and ravishing a maiden."

Legolas fairly growled the statement.

"A human maiden at that."

 He looked up, suddenly bewildered, and cast a lost look at Eldarion. "What say his countrymen?"

"They can add little to the sum of the tale, my Lord."

Eldarion shrugged.

"When questioned they say, as you do, that their Lord is known far and wide for his integrity; and that the fact that he vanished from their knowledge at the same time as the Master Smith's daughter, has to have some third cause as yet unknown. They come to crave our help, as much as the Master Smith comes to crave our justice."

Arwen's brow creased as she tried to sort through her memory of all the maidens she had had in her service for the last several decades. Finally she turned to a middle-aged woman sitting just behind her.

"Wasn't Gleowyn the Master Smith's daughter?"

Morwen covered her mouth and her eyes sparkled with suppressed mirth. Finally she nodded and, recovering her poise, was able to answer.

"My Lady has an excellent memory, although she did somewhat stand out, as it were."

Dimples threatened again and even Arwen smiled slightly.

Cirion looked at the ladies with an expression of horror on his face.

"Not that great clumsy ox of a lass that broke everything she laid her hand to. The Master Smith said she was a jewel, a fair maiden a…"

He broke off realising he was not being respectful, but the girl had broken a thousand year old vase that had been one of the treasures of Gondor. Her placid, moon like face, streaked with tears still haunted his dreams some nights. He gave an eloquent shudder.

" She had a very sweet nature," Morwen reproved gently.

"And beautiful hair."

Arwen supplied after casting around in her memory for some other characteristic of the girl that was positive.

"So, all in all, not a likely candidate to cause our friend Gimli to throw his honour to the wind and resort to kidnap," commented Aragorn. In the small silence that followed these revelations.

"Hardly," snorted Legolas. Recalling his friend's complete devotion to the vision of beauty and grace that was Galadriel.

Reviews are gratefully welcomed, treasured and replied to.

Rose Sared

This version Beta’d by Lindorien, Lyllyn, and the incomparable Theresa Green. With the earnest hope of not offending those with grammar and spelling bumps. Plot and characterisation bumps are a matter of opinion, let me know yours.

AU Fourth Age fusion of book and movie-verse. Set ninety eight years into Aragorn’s reign.

A:L:G  OC  Friendship fic. Not slash. PG for violence and some adult dilemmas in later chapters.

Angst/Adventure

Previously posted as Unbinding the box

Adagio3/9

Late Winter

The Lord of Aglarond - scrape the shovel in gravel- thought to himself- swing the load up- that the trouble with repetitive manual labour- dump the load - was that - scrape the shovel in gravel- whilst it fully occupied the body-swing the load up- it did not do nearly enough to distract the mind.

He flipped the load into the waiting barrow, a sequence so practised that it needed no conscious direction at all.

The wheelbarrow was now full, the rock catching the flickering light from the torch on the wall.

Gimli glanced again at the vein of mithril he had finally traced to this decent seam, and waited to feel the soul-deep completion such a find would have brought him pretty well any time before the last century.

The mountains of Thrihyrne nurtured their adopted children like seeds in an apple.

 The constant cool breath of Yavanna still dried his sweat. 

When he stood his shovel up against the shaft wall to spread his gnarled and work hardened hand against Aule's bones, that connection was, at least, as full as ever.

Gimli was very pleased to know he was not so lost to dwarven-kind that his soul had died.

It just felt as if it had.

The light of the torch caught the glitter of the ore in the stone again and Gimli tried to work up enthusiasm, a sense of victory, anything that he should be feeling.

It was mithril; it was so rare a find this size would fund his people for the next few decades.

 He shrugged and picked up the handle of the barrow again; trundled it out into the main passageway of the new workings, and hailed an apprentice to take it away, relieving the young dwarf of his empty one.

Then called over to his senior mine-hand to see the find.

Thoral's reaction was much more satisfactory.

0000

That evening there was a feast in his hall, above the original glittering caves.

The space was modest but airy; the ceiling groined and gilded, as were the slim pillars that lined the sides.

By day it was lit by three great arched windows that looked down the Coomb to the Hornburg and Helm's Deep, but this night a great fire of logs crackled in the hearth and flaming torches and trees of candles lit a scene of revelry from out of the songs of old.

From where he sat on his great chair, proud in the middle of the high table, Gimli could see across ranks of tables laden with meat and fruits.

Horns of ale were making their unsteady way around the company and dwarves were merry and full of cheer, toasting him and their great good fortune.

The Lord of all this found his eye captured by the light of Earendil, visible even through the misted window, sailing his ship forever in the frost bright heavens.

"Spending what we have yet to mine?"

Gliver, his old friend and named heir, broke into his wool-gathering, splashing more ale into the stein that sat neglected in front of his Lord, before sitting back heavily into his seat on the right, the worse for his own imbibing.

Gimli picked up the brimming cup and toasted Gliver, automatically, but the ale suddenly seemed tasteless, the celebration overwhelming, the night interminable.

The colony was now assured a future here in the south; mithril would fund expansion, and deck these so far simple halls with all that was good and costly.

Gimli felt glad for them and for himself, uninterested.

He shook his head and yawned.

Perhaps he was merely tired, he was no longer quite the dwarf he had been, although hard work did not dismay him it would be good to sleep.

He stood and toasted his people, to cheers and stamping acclaim, and then retired with as much dignity as he could manage, stumbling a little as he found his way to his rooms alongside the hall.

Dwarves kept no personal servants, but those that kept his household and the colony running had made a particular effort this night to make his room look inviting.

A fire warmed the air and was banked against the night, shuttered lamps burned on the tables beside his canopied bed and someone had thoughtfully provided a covered tray with small breads and cheeses lest he hunger in the night.

Gimli knew his people supported him and was touched by their care; and felt more than ever a fraud.

Sighing he leaned against the solid wood of his chamber door and started shedding his festive robes.

When he bent to deal finally with his boots his eye was caught by the graceful white pot that contained the only piece of greenery growing in Aglarond, a strap-leaved plant Legolas had sworn could not be killed by ignorance nor moderate neglect. It lifted its narrow leaves bravely to the light well that directed daylight into his quarters.

Of a sudden he could see his friend as he had stood, peering up the shaft of the well and placing the pot just so.

"Rub its leaves with some of that oil you use for your leathers if it looks dusty, and throw a cup or two of water in the soil most weeks."

The Elf had backed away from the plant, gauging its effect in the room and Gimli remembered scowling at his merry tone.

"It will die, master Elf, and then you will blame me."

Legolas had laughed at his crossness, and swiped him across the back as he had followed him back into the main hall.

"Not for nothing is it known as the cast iron plant, my friend. It will brighten your morns to have a living companion amongst all these stones."

The Elf shuddered a little and moved to the window.

"And are these stones?" Gimli had exclaimed, indicating the other dwarves going about their business in and around the hall.

"Nay."

Legolas had replied readily enough but then turned and fixed him with that damnable blue gaze, "But mayhap a Lord needs reminding of his other friends betimes, Gimli?"

Gimli had grunted and stumped up beside the Elf to look at the mist bedecked view.

"Sentimental Elf," he'd grumbled, but Legolas had only smiled and the plant had survived.

Even thrived, for two years now, until it had become like a wall hanging, comfortable, a part of his surroundings but not noticed.

Gimli tugged on a sleeping robe and padded barefoot over to the plant. He stood beside it for a while, his hands behind his back, and then reached out gently with one finger to touch a leaf.

Not much happened, he felt neither Vana nor Yavanna, which on reflection was something of a relief. But his troubled spirit was soothed, and with no more ado he quenched his lights and climbed into bed.

The next morning, rather later than dawn, he was working with Gliver in the now workaday hall, standing at a table set up in the good light under the windows, poring over some new drawn plans for the ore bearing shafts.

The mithril seam would need careful shoring to avoid undermining existing works.

They were disturbed by one of the door wardens who arrived escorting a human messenger, from Edoras by his livery.

"He carries a dispatch from Bardor, my Lord."

The warden bowed to Gimli, indicating the messenger who was even then pulling an ornate scroll from his leather pouch.

Gimli considered the youth, who was surreptitiously glancing around the hall. Few humans came guesting here as yet; although the Master Smith of Rohan, Bardor, was one who had visited many times during the discussions and negotiations that had taken place over the dwarves supplying the ovens and furnaces that Elfwine, the present king of the Rohirrim, needed to expand his country's foundries and armour-making craft halls.

"Is the Master Smith expecting a reply?" Gimli asked mildly.

The youth nodded so Gimli sent him with the door warden to seek such refreshment as could be found for him in the kitchens, while he perused the message.

"Bah!" Gimli flung the scroll down on the table and strode over to the fire.

"The man appears to be a fool, Gliver."

Gliver snorted as if the news that men may be fools came as no surprise.

Gimli kicked moodily at a log that had rolled near the front of the hearth, causing a flurry of sparks to fly up the chimney.

"He complains that the smelting oven we sold him still will not get up to temperature."

Gliver protested "But we…."

"I know, I know, old friend. We have discussed this with him on at least three different occasions, and I know he is using it for a purpose for which I never designed it, but even so."

Gimli paused for a moment and tugged absently at his beard. He then walked over to the window and rubbed a hole in the condensation so he could look into the snow girt landscape below.

" The worst weather is well past and the snow is still firm, I will travel back with this messenger and look at the problem myself."

"But the mithril?" Said Gliver aghast.

Gimli did not look at him but started gathering up the papers and scrolls on the table.

"Gliver, there are two hundred and fifty nine dwarves resident in Aglorand. Do you think we will have the slightest problem mining the mithril?"

"But, but my Lord. It is your discovery. Do you not want the…"

Gliver trailed off again, realising he had already lost his Lord's attention. Gimli had paused by the window again, and was gazing pensively out to the plains in the distance.

"Like a caged bird," the fancy struck Gliver as so strange he shivered.

He truly loved the unassuming Lord of Aglorand, despite his uncommon independence of thought and love of strange company; he was wise and fair and seemed to embody all that was good in dwarven-kind while never being bound by dwarven limitations.

Gliver was neither stupid nor blind. That some grief sat on his Lord like a rockslide had been evident since last he returned to them at the beginning of winter.

If mithril could not shake him out of his despondency then perhaps a jaunt to Edoras, and not to the cursed elves he thought parenthetically, would provide the balm his spirit obviously needed.

He left Gimli gathering up the scrolls and bustled off to find the messenger.

 0000

"Are you sure you will be all right staying here, my Lord?"

Telfaren the messenger was reluctant to leave his charge in the indifferent hands of the hostelry nearest to Bardor's compound.

He had not known what to think when he found himself with a companion for the return trip to Edoras.

Telfaren had been somewhat anxious that the grizzled old dwarf would be tedious, slow, company. As it turned out the four day trip back, towing two sturdy pack ponies piled high with tools and miscellaneous pieces of metal plate, was one that he would remember until he had grandchildren to tell of it.

The tales the old Lord knew, the places he'd been, the people he knew.

Telfaren felt more and more humble as Gimli warmed to his eager audience.

As they strode along the trail or chatted after supper whilst sharing the comfort of a pipe beside the fire, he filled the young man's head with tales of kings in exile, battles against impossible odds, wizards, elves and hobbits.

If even a third of it were true it would have been a wonderful tale. Telfaren suspected that all of it was true. He was beginning to doubt that the venerable dwarf had an untrue bone in his body. And tough; the dwarf had been slowing down for him, a trained messenger.

Telfaren looked again anxiously into the crowded common room of the inn.

"People here," he hesitated, and then finally put a hand on the dwarf's shoulder to get his attention.

"Please Lord Gimli, some of the common folk, they have strange ideas about dwarfs. Will you not come with me to wait on Master Smith Bardor and seek hospitality there?"

Gimli looked up and sideways to the messenger's concerned face. Aule's bones did the lad think he needed a nursemaid? He loosened his axe and growled.

"Sonny, I've been frequenting bars for nearly as long as there have been bars in Edoras."

He stepped into the doorway and met the messenger's eye.

"The stable lad has secured my room and now I want to wash the dust of the road off with the good ale of this house. Not waste time and words on being polite to the Master Smith."

He patted the young man on the forearm.

"Never fuss yourself, trouble will not find me this night, and Master Smith Bardor will feel more kindly disposed to me if he has some warning of my coming."

Finally, reluctantly, Telfaren left him.

Gimli's axe gleamed sharp in the flickering firelight and his gold was as good as any other being's.

He sat in a corner and drank away his weariness and quietly surveyed the current crop of humans in Edoras.

Most of the men were tall and blond, typical Rohirrim, and their talk, overheard in snatches and waves as the company moved around the room, was all of horses and bloodlines. Only one party, established in the opposite corner of the room to the one Gimli was sitting in, were of mixed darker and lighter haired men.

Young they were and bulkily muscled and drinking as after hard work. As the evening progressed they became more rowdy and tormented the pot girls as they filled their flagons, one dark visaged lad never missing a chance for a pinch or a grope, smiths and engineers, Gimli surmised.

The dwarf kept a hand to his axe as he made his way past the table to reach the stairs to his room.

The crowd in the common room had thinned as the evening progressed and it was obvious that the table fell quiet at his approach, the drunken men whispering to each other then giggling behind their hands.

The words short-changed and shoddy reached Gimli's ears but he reached the stairs with no incident and suffered their vulgar laughter propelling him up to his bed.

However he resolved to stay armed in Edoras.

The next morning he was not surprised when, as he was touring the newly installed and problematic ovens in the company of Master Bardor, he was introduced to three of the erstwhile drinking group.

Bardor, happy to play the genial host now Gimli had come to him, clapped the black browed ringleader on a broad shoulder, and boomed in his ear.

"My future son-in-law, Frecern. My Lord Gimli, am I not fortunate in my daughter's choosing? He will be a fine heir to all this." He waved his hand expansively around.

Gimli did not miss the wince that crossed the young man's face and put it down to the last night's excess. Serve him right to have a tender head, he thought to himself, with a little satisfaction.

The lad touched his forehead to his master and gave Gimli a hard stare. The Dwarf held his gaze until the youth looked away.

"And here comes my turtle-dove." Bardor beamed at his daughter with all the besotted devotion of a mother hen with one chick.

Gleowyn strode up the workshop towards them.

A big woman, she stood nearly as tall as her father and had to be taller than Frecern. She was a warhorse to a pony; compared to other human women Gimli had become familiar with.

Well proportioned but large, her short sleeved chemise showed off arm muscles that would put many a lad to shame. Her gleaming chestnut hair was braided around her head to keep it out of the way in the workshop, which had the unfortunate effect of emphasising the roundness of her features. She wore a leather apron studded with smithing tools and was obviously an active part of Bardor's operation.

She reached her father and cast a melting look at Frecern, then glanced at his guest and let out a shocked gasp.

"My Lord Gimli!"

She sank into an impressive curtsey, not the least startling for where it put her cleavage in relationship to Gimli's eye-line.

The men around her looked a little aghast. Gleowyn was not known for her submissive ways and many of them had forgotten, or never known, that she had spent her fifteenth year in the service of Queen Arwen.

She rose without a wobble and fixed her father with a wrathful gaze.

"Why didn't you tell me we had such an important guest, Father?"

Then turning to Gimli she said, "Surely you are not going to work on the ovens yourself. My Lord."

She looked around as if expecting a hoard of dwarves to appear from under the workbenches.

Finally she glared at her father again. "Father, you can't…."

Bardor raised a meaty hand to stop her in mid-tirade and turned a rueful eye on his guest.

"My Lord Gimli says the since he designed the ovens he will assess what is needful to fix them, Gleowyn."

His daughter narrowed his eyes at him, apparently unconvinced of his sincerity, and then turned back to Gimli.

"My Lord. It will do my father the greatest honour if you would consent to stay with us while you are in Edoras. Tell me of your lodgings and I will send for your gear."

 Gimli opened his mouth to protest but she would brook no nays, "Please, my Lord, let us pay you the honour you deserve," she sent another snapping glance at her father who nodded quickly.

Gleowyn turned to go, "I'll go and arrange everything then, and a feast for tonight, if it please my Lord?"

Gimli knew when he was overmatched and looked agreeable.

After dropping another flawless curtsey to him, she spared a coy smile for Frecern, and swept off.

A silence followed.

Bardor shrugged, "Since her mother died she has managed us all. I am afraid she is rather used to getting her own way, my Lord."

He shook his head at Frecern, "You'll have your work cut out, lad."

Clapping the surly youth on the back the Master Smith moved on taking Gimli with him, so missing the expression of purest hatred that crossed Frecern's face as they departed.

Glaring round the other workers as if daring them to tell, he spat on the spot where Gimli had been standing, then turned again to his workbench.

0000 

Gimli's weeks soon settled into a pattern, after working on a furnace from dawn to day meal, he would fire it up.

The afternoon was spent alternately stoking it, and pottering from one viewing hole to another checking his temperature indicators to see if his morning's labours had resulted in an improvement in efficiency.

In the evening he let the furnace go out so it would be cool enough to work on again in the morning.

It was absorbing work, for him at least, but after the third day he lost almost all of his audience.

The Master Smith found other work to do and the engineers got so used to his presence that he was hardly noticed.

Gimli's most constant companion in the afternoons was Gleowyn, who had many small projects she was working on like window catches and door latches or pots to mend from the great houses' kitchen or ones in town.

The two of them fell into the habit of chatting as the indicators glowed and Gleowyn learned much of the mechanics of furnace making, and Gimli learned much of Gleowyn's happy anticipation of her wedding and of how wonderful, the to him dubious, Frecern was.

"He is the first man who loves me despite how ugly I am," she chirruped happily one afternoon.

" He said he didn't even care about my inheritance, that he would have loved me if I was a beggar."

She smiled into the pot she was polishing and went quiet for a moment. Gimli looked at the moon struck woman, and closing the peephole walked back to her bench.

"Who ever told you that you are ugly, child?"

Gleowyn blushed, and looked away from him, "Do you think I am stupid, my Lord? I have been to court, you know. My shortcomings were well shown up for me in that company."

She smiled back at him with some dignity. "I wouldn't be surprised if I am not still famous for being the maid who broke the thousand year old vase."

Gimli lied in his teeth and denied it hotly.

It was a subject that was sometimes brought up in his hearing because he had been there when it happened.

Gleowyn sighed deeply, "You are kind, my Lord. And were then too, to a very gauche young girl. As was the Lord Legolas, Oh what a fool I made of myself that day."

Gimli snorted reminiscently, "Well you were not the first young attendant of your Queen to get flustered in my friend's company, my dear. It is something of an occupational hazard around elves."

Gleowyn laughed a little at that, "Yes we are all dim candles in their presence. Well never mind, at least I have found love now."

Gimli patted her on the back and returned to his furnace, rather the fire than go there, and that was the truth.

A couple of mornings later he was working on the last furnace, this one located in a large shed between the yard and the stables.

He had the large double doors on both ends and sides of the shed open because he was half in and half out of the oven trying to fix a tricky baffle to the roof of the flue and needed all the light he could get.

"Aule's beard!" he exclaimed, his voice booming in the oven.

He sat back down and sucked at a grazed knuckle and glared at the wrench that had just slipped and caused his injury.

"My Lord, is there something amiss?" Gleowyn's face appeared at the oven doors.

Gimli removed the abused knuckle from his mouth and waved it at the girl in negation.

"I thought you had gone riding, my dear."

He felt a little embarrassed at being caught out in his clumsiness.

"Helm threw a shoe," she explained simply.

Then leaned further in to see what was causing Gimli's problem.

"If I held that wrench on the bolt head could you not climb on top of the oven and tighten the nut?"

Gimli looked a little shocked, "But you would need to climb in here and it's not very clean."

Gleowyn laughed merrily and turned round to show the back of her dress, which was all over mud.

"Helm threw me too."

"Horses." Gimli's comment summed up his feelings in one word.

"You are prejudiced against horses, my Lord. Come on, get out so I can get in."

Once Gimli had climbed onto the roof of the oven and Gleowyn had climbed into the body of it the work proceeded with a lot more ease, until Gimli heard two voices coming round the side of the shed.

"Come on, come on my sweeting. The great cow has gone. I saw her ride out more than half an hour ago. Come to the stables with me."

"Oh Frecern, you are the wickedest man. How can you say you love me when you are going to wed her? Cruel you are."

Frecern and the prettiest kitchen maid now came into view through the open door of the shed and the girl gave a little gasp when she spotted Gimli on the top of the furnace.

Frecern hardly glanced at the dwarf lord, reached into his pocket and threw a large gold coin at him. Gimli reached up in purest reflex and caught it.

"For your silence, Gold Grubber." Outrage silenced Gimli more effectively than any further statement from Gleowyn's intended.

The couple moved on entwined, laughing and giggling. The girl mock protesting until the stable door opposite shut behind them.

 0000

The woman who slithered out of the oven, then paused to look at Gimli with grief deadened eyes, seemed ten years older than the blithe twenty three year old who had climbed in.

"Gleowyn," Gimli offered lamely.

She started edging sideways around the oven and, when she managed to put its bulk between her and the stable door, she sagged against it and pressed both hands to her lips. The silence lengthened, then she twisted round and cast an anguished look at Gimli.

"I am so sorry, my Lord," she stepped away from the oven and moved towards the door to the home yard. She said, almost in a whisper, "how could he be so rude to you?"

She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself, as if holding her chest together then caught at the doorframe and stilled again. She picked at a splinter in the wood in a distracted way then once again she met the dwarf's eye.

"Please, my Lord. Please leave me to tell my father."

Then she was gone, and Gimli was left perched on top of the oven like some ungainly decoration, itching for his axe.

That she had not told anyone of her distress by suppertime was evident in Bardor's cheerful manner. Gleowyn was absent.

"Some sick headache, her maid said," replied Bardor to Gimli's enquiry.

He shrugged in an unconcerned way, expecting Gimli to understand his lack of interest in the foibles of women.

Gimli was finding the meal intolerable and ate quickly.

"I will be going home tomorrow, Master Smith," he announced gruffly as he stood up from his meal, "So give my kindest regards to your daughter if I see her not. I will be leaving at dawn, I think."

Bardor expressed all the expected thanks due to Gimli for his work, but did not seek to detain him and Gimli retired to his room to pack, rather grateful to have been spared the emotional fireworks that would no doubt erupt in the house tomorrow.

In the light of a new day he was farewelled on Bardor's steps by his sleepy and slightly puzzled host.

"My Lord, it appears Gleowyn has ridden out already today. To visit her mother's grave according to the note she left me," he held up a scrap of parchment.

Bardor scratched his head and missed Gimli's rather exasperated sigh.

"She becomes more capricious the closer we get to her wedding." Bardor looked the picture of puzzlement.

"She must have left before first light."

Bardor shook his head, a frown slightly creasing his forehead, but then he clapped Gimli on the shoulder,

"Will you be taking the plains road to Aglorand?"

"Nay," Gimli replied shortly. "I think Dunharrow, then the mountain passes."

"Then you may yet see her to say your farewells in person, her mother is buried at Harrowdale, near where she was born."

Gimli only grunted, waved and stumped off down the road. For the life of him he felt that if he stayed one more minute he would trip over his tongue. He shifted his pack higher on his back and placed his hand firmly on the haft of his belt axe.

Some time in the mountains in his own company, that is what he needed, dealing with other species was simply too gruelling.

 0000

Gleowyn was solid, transparent ice. Which is how it should be when you are dead, she thought.

She had ridden from Edoras in the darkest hour before dawn, and walked her horse past the many windings of the river Snowbourne, clattering as un-remarked as a ghost through Upbourn.

Now in the light of day she trotted quickly through Underharrow, a more substantial town serving as it did all the rich farm lands lining the Snowbourne valley under Starkhorn and up to the Dwimorborg itself.

A couple of early risers hailed her there with a cheery "Good Morrow." But ice speaks not, and she rode on distracted.

Past Underharrow she wound through well-known fields and lanes until she came to the great plain of Harrowdale, snow-free now, with willows blushing red on the stream banks.

Birds sang a mighty welcome from the hedgerows to the new day, but she was ice and it did not crack her.

Helm, her patient black horse, finally found his way to her destination, a quiet cemetery nestled under the cliff of Dunharrow.

Gleowyn slid off his broad back and took off first his saddle, and then his bridle. Carefully she balanced his tack on the knee of a nearby willow tree and then turned at his soft breath on her neck, and rested her face on his. But she was ice; so eventually she turned from him and left him grazing there, and wandered down well-trod pathways, through the gravestones that cast long black shadows on her feet, until she reached her mother.

At that long mound she folded herself onto her stomach and laid full length on the soft grass under the grey stone; and waited to melt.

She slept instead. The day arched over her, and when she woke she was under the shadow of the cliff beside her; and was still ice.

Painfully she stood, and let the world sway and dim and then settle, for she had neither eaten nor drunk since the previous noon.

She tilted her head back and traced the zigzag path that wound up to the Firienfield; the sun just caught the last Pukel-man on the top most terrace.

Slowly she made her way to the bottom of the climb and started up, stumbling sometimes from statue to statue, but quite determined to reach the top. It would be high enough. Dimly she heard some shouting behind her, but was ice, so did not look back nor pay anything attention except reaching the summit.

Then the grassy alp was under her feet, and the lip of the cliff cut off the sound behind her, and she wandered away along its edge.

She unbound her shining hair and let it fall around her like a shawl, and the wind from the valley blew it around and into her mouth and eyes so she could no longer see. So she sat on the very edge of the drop, and dangled her feet over the loops and turns of the Snowbourne far below, and still she was ice.

Leaning forward she drew her own beautiful dagger from its sheath at her waist, and held it up to catch the last bright sunlight.

She used its sharp edge to slice through the laces on her bodice, and then gently dug its point into her chest, just between her breasts.

For a moment she watched the crimson well, then she gasped as the wound hurt.

She was ice.

Her hair smeared the blood as it whipped around her and she caught a hank and hacked at it with her knife, cutting her hand and her hair, and it hurt.

She was not ice; and the despair and the desperate pain of Frecern's betrayal was even worse than the fresh pain in her chest and hands, and she swung the knife up and out with the intention of driving it into her heart.

And Gimli caught it on his gauntlet, wrenched it out of her grip and tossed it away, in the same breath catching her under the arms and dragging her away from the cliff edge, and back onto the fresh spring grass of the Firienfield.

Gleowyn fought him, crying and screaming; and then when his iron grip would not loosen, she dissolved into helpless, gasping and overwhelming, tears.

TBC

Reviews are gratefully  welcomed, treasured and replied to.

Rose Sared

AU Fourth Age fusion of book and movie-verse. Set ninety eight years into Aragorn’s reign.

A:L:G  OC  Friendship fic. Not slash. PG for violence and some adult dilemmas in later chapters.

Angst/Adventure

Previously posted as Unbinding the Box

Adagio

Chapter Four

Early Spring

Aragorn looked at the sad collection of objects laid out on the table in front of him and felt his heart sink. Whatever the true story, something was indisputably amiss.

Legolas leaned over and picked up the leather gauntlet with its sliced palm and took it nearer the window to examine it in the light.

Aragorn surveyed the blood marred, embroidered bodice, that still had the remains of cut laces caught in the eyelets, and then touched a finger to the crusted dagger.

"These are Gleowyn's?" He asked Bardor, who looked red eyed and as gaunt as a man of his size could. Aragorn doubted that he had slept in the last week.

Bardor nodded and held out a last object, tied with a thin silk ribbon. "Her hair, Sire. Even that was mired and blooded."

His composure suddenly fled and he had to look away, struggling to hold back a sob.

"She fought hard, my girl."

Aragorn felt enormous sympathy for the man.

The young man who had accompanied the Master Smith, Frecern, Aragorn remembered, Gleowyn's fiancé, took his master's elbow and guided him into a nearby chair. Bardor sank his face in his hands.

Angrily Frecern strode back to the table, leaned his hands on it, and glared at Aragorn, who had been glared at by experts so remained unmoved.

"It's his, isn't it?" Frecern spat the question in the direction of Legolas.

The Elf exchanged a confirming glance with his king, but ignored the youth's outburst, returning the glove to the table and then moving back beside Aragorn without speaking.

Frecern had followed the exchange, and seemed to swell with self-righteous rage.

"I demand justice and weregild from that murdering dwarf's kin."

He got no further with his demands, finding himself suddenly at the sharp end of Legolas' furious gaze. Aragorn snapped a hand up automatically to bar Legolas from charging over to make murder a fact, not a surmise.

"Frecern. " He said with some restraint. "By your and your Master's testimony none know what happened, and both parties are missing."

Legolas bowed slightly to Aragorn and stepped back again, but his eyes did not leave the dark haired smith, who found himself shifting nervously, as if targeted.

Aragorn continued. "I would also remind you that the Lord of Aglarond is named Elf-friend and held in high esteem at this court. So respect will be shown to his name until it is proved he has forfeited his right to it."

The swarthy smith backed away and bowed, but Aragorn thought he was not repentant.

Aragorn looked over to Bardor again. "You are sure there are no witnesses to be found?"

"Only the goat herd, as I said, Sire."

 Bardor rested his head back in the chair, wearily.

"And the lad is simple. We could get no more out of him than that he had seen a dwarf following the pretty lady up Dunharrow cliff."

"And the dwarves have had no word?"

"So say they." Sneered Frecern, irrepressibly.

"Aye, and so they say to me also." Stated Aragorn in a quelling voice.

 He was fast losing patience with Gleowyn's intended.

Legolas moved to study the great map of Gondor that hung on the wall of the chamber, tracing the various marked roads and tracks that ran in and out of Harrowdale. Not marked, but large in his memory, was the other path the missing pair could have taken, under the Dwimorburg, leading at last to the Morthond Vale.

He did not believe it was a path Gimli would have taken by choice. The Elf could not remember any other time Gimli had been so discomforted as when he had followed the Grey company through the Paths of the Dead. It was not something ever discussed between them, but it was so.

Behind him Aragorn was ushering the two men out of the room with a promise of practical aid in the morning. Then the king came back and looked at the map, placing a careful hand on Legolas' upper arm.

"We'll go ourselves, my friend, and find them and some long tale, I am sure."

Legolas glanced at Aragorn, and thought he looked worried.

Arranging an escort, delegating his royal duties and discussing the endless details of government with Eldarion and Cirion, took all of the rest of Aragorn's day and occupied him far into the night. It was very late when he finally reached his bedchamber and the welcome sight of Arwen, propped against a sea of pillows embroidering while she waited for him.

Aragorn undid his sword belt and, glancing at his queen with ill concealed smugness, hung it up on the stand provided. Arwen's lips tilted up and she followed his progress with her eyes as he walked over to the chair where he sat and tugged off his boots.

"I am sorry," His voice became a little muffled as his shirt followed his waistcoat over his head.

 "I missed supper, and I wanted to talk to Tolman."

Aragorn, once again making eye contact, separated his waistcoat from his shirt and draped both garments neatly over the back of the chair.

Arwen's smile developed a dimple. She put her embroidery down on the side table and frankly watched as his trousers descended, were removed and placed neatly on the seat of the chair.

He looked coyly over his shoulder at her because she was openly laughing at him now, and whipped a towel around his hips before stalking into the adjacent bathing room.

He regally ignored her disappointed pout.

"And did Tolman tell you of his plans?"

Aragorn raised his voice a little to be heard through the open doorway, Arwen appeared in it, then glided over to deal with his back and hair.

"He and Legolas bored the whole table with an endless discussion of, " she frowned a little and Aragorn ran a wet finger across the bridge of her nose to smooth the lines.

 "Ah that's it; 'plant variants and species'."

She flicked water at him and then escaped back to the bedroom as he surged out of the water after her.

Another towel was thrown in from the doorway and Aragorn caught it, then climbed right out of the bath and started to dry himself.

"The two of them distracted themselves sufficiently then?"

"For a while, Tolman is planning some collecting trip after visiting the library."

Arwen replied, climbing back into bed after blowing out the candles and then joyfully opening her arms to her husband as he climbed in after her, a little damply.

Some time later, Aragorn, snuggled into his wife's accommodating curves, asked sleepily.

"Do you know about Legolas and Minuial's relationship?"

"What about it?"

Aragorn sighed, he should have figured.

"I didn't."

Arwen snorted with laughter.

"You have walked over the whole of Middle-earth with him, and known him for most of your life, and you didn't know. What do men talk about?"

Aragorn was too tired to tell her, he didn't know anyway.

Three weeks earlier

Ghazari-buri-Ghai was secretly ashamed of his womb brother Ghodsi.

The Wose, his people, were the mountain's children, and like the mountains should be perfect, strong and enduring. Ghazari's own strength and courage had provided him with a necklace of Warg fangs, and the respect of his chief, Ghunkor-buri-Ghan.

Ghunkor was a mighty hunter himself, of course, and had four wives to prove it, but when the Chief had held this latest dead infant to his heart, and joined the women's stricken ululation to the spirits of Irensaga, it was to Ghodsi, not Ghazari, that the tribe had turned to for help.

Ghodsi the special, Ghodsi the deformed, with his withered arm and twisted leg, Ghodsi the shaman and prophet.

Ghazari had to give mana to his brother.

He had risen, or in his case fallen, to the occasion without hesitation.

Letting the spirit catch him he fell down writhing in one of his bucking, frothing fits, and intoned in the hollow tongue of the mountains:

"Near the abandoned temple of your fathers seek for the broken maiden. Healing follows."

 Before finally going slack and falling asleep.

A collective shudder had run through the assembled families, echoing the chill standing the short hairs up on his neck. It was never comfortable when the spirits touched mortal lives.

Now Ghazari watched his lame brother as he peered through the sheltering firs at the base of the Dwimorburg, and wondered afresh how he had known that the tunnels, closed to them for generations almost without number, had been cleansed of old evil.

He asked him, but Ghodsi just looked at him with his black, manic eyes and gestured at the first stars appearing over Starkhorn.

Ghazari shared a look with his trail brothers, who had all lost most of their awe of Ghodsi during this long trip. He had contributed very little, his prophetic powers did not stretch to telling them where to hunt most successfully and he ate what seemed his weight in meat despite his skinny frame.

Ghazari shrugged, then gestured in a circle and at the trees and watched as the band melted from sight.

Ghazari stood behind a fir tree and watched Ghodsi poking at the orange fungi that grew on the south side of the trunks.

Finally Ghodsi stiffened like a dog on a scent, and even Ghazari felt a difference in the forest.

He darted forward and pulled Ghodsi into concealment, giving the grinning shaman the sort of no-nonsense look that even Ghodsi respected from their shared childhood. Then Ghazari scouted ahead, and, to his again secret chagrin, found the sobbing woman they had been sent for, exactly where Ghodsi had said she would be.

 00000

Tears, Gimli thought, were harder to endure than any of the battles he had fought over the last hundred or so years.

"Nay lass, lass, he's not worth such grief." He patted Gleowyn's anguished back and waited with all the patience of a weathered stone for the storm to pass.

The day slid from twilight to velvet black, Earendil shone over Starkhorn's head like a jewel in a crown, and eventually Gleowyn found herself again and began to regain control.

"There, now that's more the thing, lass."

Gimli fished in the pack he had manoeuvred down beside him and handed her a clean square of linen.

Gleowyn managed a watery twitch of her lips and accepted the cloth gratefully. If nothing else it gave her something to hide behind.

She sat up and Gimli stood to stretch out his kinks and give her a little space.

He eyed the cliff edge and the crumpled girl. The evening had brought with it a bitter wind out of the valley and if he felt it, Gleowyn would be getting chilled.

"Come child," Gimli shouldered his pack again and stood in front of the woman.

"Let us seek some place more sheltered."

Gleowyn suffered his helping hand, then wrapped her arms around her middle and stood bowed like a willow, but when he moved off she followed him meekly up the meadow alongside the standing stones letting the wind push her along.

She felt hollowed out and quite unable to make any decisions for herself, letting someone else take over was the purest luxury.

hey made their way into the shelter of the first dark trees and the wind was cut off, leaving them in the eerie sighing presence of the wood and the standing stones.

Gimli finally stopped prowling around his chosen campsite and fell to gathering enough dead wood to start and maintain a small fire. He still felt uneasy, but shrugged it off, these woods had even repelled Legolas the last time they had passed. It was not surprising he felt twitchy.

He settled to watching Gleowyn as she prepared them a meal from the supplies he had carried. She had begged for a task in a weak voice, most unlike her usual confident tones, and Gimli, after a startled pause, had seen the wisdom in busyness and gone instead to fetch water for them both from the rill they had camped beside.

Gleowyn's blood stained chemise looked both flimsy and grim in the firelight.

Gimli could see gooseflesh on her upper arms despite her proximity to the fire, so he bethought himself, then dug in his pack for the third time and finally pulled out the small package that was his tightly wrapped elven cloak. He shook it out doubtfully then struck with inspiration turned it sideways, and offered it to her mutely.

Gleowyn paused in her tormenting of the sizzling sausages, glanced down at her state of bedraggled dress, and gratefully wrapped the material about her shoulders, fixing it out of the way with its own beautiful leaf clasp.

She opened her mouth to thank him for his unending kindness but her gratitude caught on her raw nerves, and instead she dissolved once again into a flood of wracking sobs.

Gimli rescued their dinner from drowning without comment, and she stumbled over to the standing stone and sat with her back to it, struggling for control, huddled in the surprising warmth of his cloak.

She found she could not eat; the food seemed like so much ash in her mouth so she ended up offering most of her meal back to Gimli.

He accepted and swapped her a large tin cup full of hot tea spiked with some added spirit he had poured in from a silver flask he had excavated from his seemingly bottomless pack.

The tea was as welcome as the sun in the morning; she cradled it between her hands and sipped, enjoying the pure animal comfort.

Gimli had taken off his helmet and topcoat and was working around the fire in his shirtsleeves and waistcoat.

Gleowyn thought how efficient and graceful he was, despite his short stature and differences from her own kind. She was watching how the firelight played with the sliver and red in the intricate braid that ran down his beard, when it seemed suddenly as if a stick had grown in his chest.

She frowned, not understanding, then gasped as another arrow took the dwarf in the left shoulder, spun him around away from the fire and dropped him just as a third arrow missed its target and ended up quivering in the grass between them.

"No." She scrambled to her feet. "Gimli."

Then the little clearing was full of the wild men she had only heard of in nursery tales, arrows nocked, squat and alien to her eyes the image of the statues she had used as props earlier in the day as she scrambled up the cliff path. They were dressed barbarically in layered animal skins and grass and their faces were painted with blue and black dye, causing them to look even less human.

She screamed, pushed this day past any reasonable limit, and tried to run to Gimli, but the warriors caught at her arms and waist, and easily overpowered her.

They bound her with jute ropes despite her desperate struggles, and so quickly it seemed impossible, they had trussed her like a deer; and like a hunting kill she was carried out of the clearing between two Wose warriors.

Gimli lay in helpless rage; the paralysing poison on the arrows meant it was purest luck that his head was turned in the direction of the warrior's retreat.

He saw the band trot off down the stone lined pathway that lead to the Dimholt and the forbidden door, with Gleowyn still twisting and shouting despite being bound, and then the poison overcame even his sturdy senses; and all went dark.

If the third arrow had found its mark that would have been the end for the Lord of Aglarond, Elf-friend and hero of the fellowship; but dwarves are hardy folk, much hardier than most would credit, and even though his system could not throw off the effects of the poison quite as quickly as it would have in his youth, still he had a burning will to wake.

Even as he struggled to breathe throughout the long night, part of him fought against the velvet lure of peace and ease, and as the dawn broke night's dominion over the sky, Gimli woke.

He found in that grey light that by degrees he could get his fingers to work.

Slowly and with great pain he inched a hand up to his chest to where the first arrow was lodged. With an effort but deliberately no thought, he plucked the slender shaft out. Darkness descended again.

Only a little while later, the sun had yet to rise high enough to clear Starkhorn's knees, he dealt in a similar manner to the arrow in his shoulder, and this time, although he gagged from the pain, he kept a hold of his awareness.

A little later still, dragging himself on hands and knees like some beast away from the site of his defeat, he moved over to his pack which, thank Aule for his grace, was still where he had left it the night before.

Fumbling, limited by the pain each breath levied, he reached for the silver flask of miruvor he had tucked back into the top of his pack last night.

"Ah, right now I could grant Minuial her point, my friend. If you were close I would kiss you."

The wonderful elixir of the elves was a staple that Legolas had insisted Gimli carry whenever he left his home.

The stopper yielded, and Gimli took a swig that would surely put life into a dead mumakil.

Peace and life flooded through the ailing dwarf's body, and Gimli had to close his eyes for a second to squeeze back tears of gratitude.

When he opened them again the sun had finally lit the tops of the standing stones leading down to the Dimholt, and memory of Gleowyn's torment drove him to his feet. Where he swayed in a most alarming manner.

He sighed, then slowly picked up his pack, scattered the last remains of his fire, struggled into his coat and helmet as well as he could with only one working hand, and started down the path he had only travelled once before.

Where he had been before he could go again, so he staggered off and was lost to sight as he passed through the forbidden door.

TBC

Rose

All Reviews will be treasured and read again and again when I am feeling less than confident.

AU Fourth Age fusion of book and movie-verse. Set ninety eight years into Aragorn’s reign.

A:L:G  OC  Friendship fic. Not slash. PG for violence and some adult dilemmas in later chapters.

Angst/Adventure

Previously posted as Unbinding the Box on ffnet

Adagio

Chapter Five

Three weeks on

Things had been simpler in earlier days, Aragorn thought, not for the first time.

Finally, not disgracefully late of the morning, they were riding on the great west road towards Rohan.

Beside him rode Legolas and, as they traversed the Rammas Echor the way was narrow enough to temporarily separate them from their escort so it was just the two of them, together.

He could pretend for a moment that little had changed over the years; as long as he did not raise his eyes higher than the ears of his horse, because then he would see the banner bearers and his forward guard, a troop of twenty men protecting their King.

As he cleared the wall he had to resist the urge to look back and watch the enormous snaking train of his personal guard, his city escort, the guard sent as a courtesy from King Elfwine of Rohan; followed by the Master Smith's party, the party from Aglarond and a tail of wagons carrying the cavalcade's tents provisions and sundry servants.

If he looked sideways he would have seen the keen outriders flanking their path. He chose not to.

Clear finally of the town lands surrounding the city Legolas looked into the far distance with his elven senses. Aragorn saw him fix for while on the forest of Druaden, wrapped as it was round the northern foothills of Mount Mindolluin.

Aragorn was struck by a sudden curiosity.

"Do your folk have commerce with the Woses, Legolas?"

"They are known to us." Legolas shifted his focus back to the King, but added no more

Aragorn was used to playing twenty questions with his friend. "And are your relations friendly?"

Legolas looked thoughtful. "Often." He offered finally.

Aragorn examined the blue sky and counted four white clouds before he trusted his voice again. He suspected Legolas of being obscure on purpose.

He changed the subject.

"Arwen wonders what we talk of, on the road, Legolas. Shall I tell her I actually spend my time prying information out of an immortal who has the conversational skills of a clam?"

Legolas looked at him, then turned his gaze back to the forest shrouded slopes.

"Well, you and I have more in common than the Elves and the Woses, Estel. I think they were here before both of us."

Aragorn gave up, and fell back into brooding about his changing lands.

The countryside was now intensively cultivated close to the city, and he could see farms and villages scattered as far as he could see across the flat plains of Anorien, from Cair Andros to the Entwash fading into the blue distance. He knew very few of them intimately, most had been established in the last ninety years. The very smell of the air was different from earlier times.

He was starting to feel like an anachronism.

He was snapped out of his bleak thoughts when a messenger galloped up the greenway from the direction of Rohan. The rider was intercepted by the King's guard and after a short conference escorted to Aragorn.

"He carries despatches from King Elfwine, Sire."

Both the guard and the messenger bowed leaving the messenger to hand his satchel's contents to the King.

"Well ridden, Lad." He complimented the youth.

"See Legolas, Elfwine penned this yester-eve at Edoras."

The messenger looked pleased.

"Your majesty is kind. I asked especially to be sent as my Lord Gimli," Legolas' attention sharpened, "is a hero and I could not stand any more of the whispers and calumnry being spread against him in Edoras."

"You have personal knowledge of him?" Legolas found his tongue.

"I have had that honour, my Lord. I accompanied him from Aglarond to Edoras some six weeks back."

Telfaren bowed to the Elf Lord.

"He was very gracious to me, and good company with his tales of great deeds."

Aragorn finished scanning the message, and then nodded dismissal to the messenger.

 "I will write an answer when we camp, nigh on Firien Wood, tonight. Can you wait?"

Telfaren nodded and bowed himself out of the royal presence.

Aragorn smiled at Legolas.

"Well, now we know Gimli is still enough himself that he continues his habit of making unlikely friends."

Legolas eyed Aragorn haughtily.

"First I am a clam and now I am unlikely. I think I will find company with more manners."

Aragorn laughed out loud, and Legolas was pleased to see the dark cloud lift from his friend temporarily; it made many things bearable.

 0000

Ghunkor-buri-Ghan watched his warriors drive the women of the horse-people into the village, and felt the bitter bite of premonition. This was wrong.

He had been distracted by his grief when they set off.

 His third son born dead in four years, Bar-Suli listless and turning her face from him in shame, and then prophesies and the demand for action.

 It had been easier to give in than to argue with Ghazari who was always reckless and ready for mischief, and now he was ashamed.

He showed nothing of this on his face of course, sitting impassive on the Ban-Rock of Rule outside of his hut door, under the sheltering peak of Halfirien.

He watched as the returnees filed down the grassy alp towards him, emerging from the steam generated by the hot pools like the old ghosts that were now cleared from the temple by the grace of the King of the Stone-city.

If he lifted his eyes from their arrival he could see the foothills of the Ered Nimrais falling in decreasing arcs, until the bulk of Starkhorn rose into the sky hiding the city of Edoras from even eagle sight.

But he knew what had been done here would be a stain on the good will of those fierce people, whose friendship this last century had allowed his people to expand into the mountain heights of their ancestors.

This was not a good day.

Gleowyn had moved past anger and despair in the five days it had taken to get here. Now she nursed a burning hatred in her breast for these people that had slain one of the truest souls in middle-earth like a base beast.

The intensity of her feeling made the pain she had felt before she was kidnapped seem the merest annoyance, and she laboured under guilt, that she could see no atoning for, in leading Gimli to his death.

After the first day her captors had had no word from her mouth. She ate what she was given, for she needed her strength to stay on her feet. But her burning contempt had begun to affect the whole party, from Ghodsi to Ghazani, and the warriors were silent and subdued as they led her bound form to present her to their Chief.

Gleowyn spat on his feet.

Ghazani jerked hard on the rope that was worked as a halter that ended at her hands and she fell to her knees; but she quickly lifted her chin and glared at the round headed, thick bodied man in front of her.

Bowed but not defeated at all.

Ghunkor considered her for a minute or two, and then raised his eyes to look at Ghazani and his twin brother Ghodsi.

First he looked at Ghazani, and deliberately used the common tongue so the woman could understand him.

 "Did it ever occur to you to ask her if she could help us?"

The look on Ghazani's face told him all he needed to know about that.

He shifted his focus to Ghodsi, "Did you?"

Ghodsi wriggled and twisted his feet and looked at the rock and the hut wall and the back of Gleowyn's head. Eventually he shook his head.

Gleowyn's outrage reached boiling point, she scrambled to her feet and screamed at the brothers.

"You killed him and didn't even have a reason."

She turned back to the chief.

 "You gave them no orders?"

Tears were now running unheeded down her cheeks, "You let them kill one of the Fellowship, beloved of the King and his people; and they could of asked?"

Her fury was truly awesome and the warriors backed away a step or two in front of it.

Ghunkor now rose to his feet, all his forebodings coming home to roost.

"Explain, Ghazani-buri-Ghai. What dishonour have you brought to our homes, already blighted as they are?"

"It was just a dwarf, my Chief. It was guarding the woman, so we shot it. The gods said nothing of a dwarf, my Chief."

“He was Gimli! He was Lord Gimli of the Nine Walkers, you stupid savage. He was beloved of elves and kings and,” Gleowyn choked. “He was kind.”

Sobs overwhelmed her and she sank to the ground.

Ghunkor breifly shut his eyes.

“I have heard of this hero.”

Ghunkor drew his belt knife and cut the halter from Gleowyn's arms, then spun around and held the knife to the great vein under Ghazani's chin.

The circle of watching warriors and families drew back further.

 The silence highlighted the chorus of coughs and wheezes that were the constant accompaniment of life now the gods had removed their favour from Ghunkor's village.

“The gods said nothing…” Ghazani looked stunned and terrified.

"Well, tell the gods I have lost patience with them, Ghazani. Tell them to mend your stupidity"

And with that he slit the hapless warrior’s neck, and stepped back to let his body fall twitching at his feet.

Screams came from the assembled watchers, and Gleowyn backed away, suddenly pale and silent.

Ghunkor wiped the knife on Ghazani's cloak, and turned slowly to look at Ghodsi, who was on his knees with tears flowing down his face.

"Do you have any more messages for us, Ghodsi?" Ghodsi sobbed a little harder but managed a headshake.

Ghunkor pushed him onto his side with his foot. Ghodsi lay snivelling. Ghunkor left his foot on the shaman's side, as he looked at all the people in his village, finally letting his gaze rest on the shocked face of the captured woman.

"And can you save my people, woman of Rohan. Tell me what is wrong?"

It was his turn to be shocked when the woman met his eye and stated with convincing confidence.

"Oh, yes, I can. Now I'm here I'm sure,” She pointed at the seam of yellow that painted the cliff wall behind the tribe. “It's Morgoth's bile and all that coughing, Morgoth's bane."

 0000

Two weeks later

Gleowyn picked Luin-beri-Ghan's whimpering babe out of her hammock and walked with her on her shoulder to the mouth of the hut that had become home for the last two weeks.

Far below the afternoon sun painted Firien Wood with gold and black and lit the far fields of Anorien and Rohan in the misty distance. She knew she could not really see Edoras for the bulk of Starkhorn across the Folde, but she could pretend.

Little Bin coughed sadly against her neck, startling herself into a fretful cry that Gleowyn soothed absently with a rhythmic pat on the back. She turned to peer back at the sandstone cliff that formed the east wall of the alp; the yellow seam of Morgoth's bile seemed to leer out at her where it ran along the layered wall. The old miner's saw about the yellow ore would seem to be true, it had certainly brought these people rue. So many of them were sick.

The young and the old, and especially the women with young babes, the People were preparing to move from this place but it took time and organisation, they were nearly ready now.

Despite being captured and walked here like so much baggage, she had not been harmed really; if you did not count the fact that they would not allow her to leave, and if she could discount the real grief she still felt for being the cause of the death of Lord Gimli.

That was a grief she wept for every night, her own woes seeming suddenly insignificant when set against such a loss to middle earth.

She heard Luin's harsh cough coming closer and turned to give Bin back to her mother.

It was the yellow ore, she was sure, her father had had a whole tin mine ruined by it, in fact its presence in these hills had curtailed most mining work, and the cough it caused was known as Morgoth's bane in Edoras.

Suddenly the drums started, echoing up from the forest. All the men stopped their tasks to listen.

Ghodsi sidled up beside her.

"Stone-house father comes to our woods."

He gestured away and down to the bottom of the hills where the West road crossed Firien Wood.

"Woses count many men. Many banner."

Gleowyn gazed at him in dumb surprise for a moment before suddenly becoming galvanised into action.

"Ghodsi, this is it."

She grabbed the skinny man and shook him.

"The hands of the king are the hands of the healer. Ghodsi you have to get Ghunkor to go to him. He's the healing following me."

 00000

 Late in the afternoon Aragorn had been lulled into the timeless blank that occupied his mind on any long journey, and was only started into awareness when his horse stopped under him in response to the halting of his forward guard.

He reached out and touched Legolas on the arm, bringing him back into the moment as well; his friend became touchy if strangers found him asleep in the saddle.

Aragorn leaned forward to ease his muscles and examined this wide field on the borders of Firien Wood to assess its suitability as a campsite.

Of course his forward guard were doing that for him already.

He exchanged a look with Legolas and then dismounted, pausing for a moment after his feet hit the ground. He was definitely going to have to find an excuse to take more regular long rides, he felt decrepit.

The rest of the party moved into the field, and in a commendably short while Aragorn's pavilion was set up and what seemed like a small town of tents encircled it, housing the various members of his party in efficient comfort.

The woods started reverberating with the drum calls of the Wose people he thought he had left behind in Druaden forest.

"Have the wild men been here long?" he enquired of the head of the Rohan honour guard who happened to be near when the sound erupted.

The man peered into the twilight that was advancing under the trees as if he expected to see Pukel-men lining the wood edge.

"Nay, less than five years to my knowledge Sire."

 He looked earnestly at the king.

"They are shy for all their racket. Only the foresters see them and only when they want to trade. I think they live up yonder mostly."

He waved his arm vaguely at the frowning peaks of Calenhad and Halfirien; still snow capped this early in the season.

Aragorn nodded to the man who escaped the royal inquisition with some relief.

Aragorn went to find Legolas, by the horses, as was no surprise.

Legolas placed his mount's hind foot down gently and stood up from his grooming, placing the hoof-pick neatly in the leather roll he had produced from his slim saddlebags.

"Will you visit these trees, Legolas?" Legolas gave the forest a considering look then smiled gaily at his King.

"Aye, they have much to tell me I think. And I hunger for trees after all these days away from Ithilien."

"Will you join me later then, for a game perhaps?"

Legolas picked up his bow and quiver from the small pile of his possessions stacked alongside the picket line. "Mayhap. And we may even share a woodcock or two for supper?"

He slung his weapons around himself with joy, and walked off to the woods edge, raising a hand in farewell to his king before swinging himself up onto the nearest convenient branch and vanishing from Aragorn's sight.

Aragorn considered the busy people around him, grooms, cooks, dwarves and soldiers and decided he had better go and write some letters before he felt completely redundant.

Much later in the evening he was sitting in the lamp-lit silk of his pavilion working, not on the despatches, which he had completed much earlier, but on a tricky translation from the Quenya of a poem he had never quite understood when it was sung on feast days in his youth at Rivendell.

He heard a disturbance at the boundary of the camp and jerked his head up, but waited to see if it was anything that needed his attention.

It really upset his guards if he interfered and made them feel as if they weren't doing a good enough job.

Finally the sound of challenge and counter-challenge reached the soldiers outside his door and he rolled up the scroll and its translation and waited to see what was going to come through the tent flap this time.

After a short pause Legolas swept in, bringing the cool air of the evening with him like a wave, and behind him came a wild man, short and round limbed as Merry had described them to him all those years ago, dressed in a rather magnificent cloak made of snow martin pelts, his face painted with blue and black dye so that it looked a grotesque mask.

Aragorn looked a question at the Elf.

"This is Ghunkor-buri-Ghan, over-chief of the clan of the Horned Goat who have claimed this mountain and forest as home. He wants to speak to you. In fact he is quite insistent."

Legolas stepped to one side and left the chief contemplating the King.

Aragorn inclined his head.

Ghunkor sank to his knees in front of him then banged his forehead on the carpeted floor of the tent.

Aragorn stood, but before he could say anything the chief began to speak. His voice muffled by his submissive posture.

"Stone-city King, mercy I crave you. Wrong has been done, not undone it may be, but justice I meted as my honour dictated. Now my people suffer, still they suffer, even as the gods spoke we suffer and the horse-woman said, "Mighty is the healing of the King." If more lives are needed mine is forfeit, and after me the warriors have sworn service."

He risked a glance up at the King who was listening with a furrowed brow.

Ghunkor gestured at the unseen forest outside.

"The drums tell of the dishonour so all Wild men know it, no home now have we."

Aragorn had a bad feeling, he glanced at the Elf who appeared fascinated by this recitation but not yet worried, then bent down on one knee to try to get on a level with the Chief.

"What horse-woman, Ghunkor?"

"She, of whom the prophecy spoke."

 The Chief seemed to struggle with the King's obvious lack of understanding for a moment then turned to the Elf.

"Go thou where I found you. Towards the mountain you will find her, with the women waiting, and the babes."

He reached up and removed one of the three brown feathers braided into his hair.

"By this the warriors shall know you."

He handed it to Legolas who vanished out the door. After a second the door guard stepped inside to watch the King's uncouth guest.

Ghunkor ignored the guard and prostrated himself again in front of the king who was feeling a little uncomfortable with the intensity of this, obviously proud, man's submission.

"There is more, Ghunkor-buri-Ghan?" The King asked.

"The King is wise, as it is spoken." The chief swallowed. "When my warriors brought the woman, she was not willing."

The short man knelt back on his heels and scanned the tent as if checking the Elf had really gone, then bravely met the Kings eye.

"Her companion was killed by one who is now dead by my hand."

"And her companion was?" Aragorn asked, already fearing the answer.

"A Dwarf, claimed by the horse-woman to be one of the nine that saved our world in the times of my grandfather."

Ghunkor saw the King close his eyes in pain, and fell back on his face. Leaving the Aragorn to open his eyes and meet the appalled expression on the face of the young guard.

Aragorn broke the silence wearily.

"I must take council on these fell tidings, Ghunkor. Go thou with this soldier, who will keep you safe for me until I call for you again. Many members of our party need to hear your story, and not least him who you sent to bring your people."

Ghunkor, impassively in control again, meekly rose to his feet and followed the guard, who had also managed to wrestle a more professional mask over his features.

Aragorn sat back down on his chair, rubbed at his forehead fretfully and then bent again to his pen to make a list, finally he called in the second guard and gave it to him.

"Make sure the Lord Legolas comes to me first, Darion. It is important."

The guard saluted and left, and Aragorn waited in the momentary calm for the storm to break.

 0000

Aragorn told Legolas what the Wild Man had said, and watched the life and animation drain out of the Elf's face as if it was water pouring from a jug.

 Legolas faltered where he stood, and Aragorn quickly guided him into a chair and handed him the goblet of wine he had poured earlier.

He hadn't thought his friend would take the news well.

Legolas looked up at Aragorn with eyes that seemed suddenly too big for his delicate face.

"Surely this cannot be, Estel?"

He clutched the goblet of wine to his chest, then seeming to realise what it was, took a huge gulp of the contents.

Aragorn sat down knee-to-knee with him and waited.

"It is senseless, Estel. How could he be dead?"

Legolas looked around the pavilion frantically then finally rested his gaze on the sombre face in front of him. A tear, unnoticed, ran down his cheek.

He finished the wine in his goblet, and then got up with a restless energy that was quite purposeless.

Aragorn stood also and shadowed him, and then, when he stopped near the wall of the tent and bowed his head, the King clasped him by the shoulders and rested his own forehead on the Elf's.

"I am so sorry, Legolas. I do not know the details of what happened, but I guarantee he would have died, as he lived, with honour."

Legolas shook his head in misery and swiped the back of his hand across his wet cheeks.

"Would he was alive; his honour was never in question."

 00000

Stone-Water-Worn-Smooth, the cave troll, was having a good day.

He had used his clever boulder trick, out on the mountainside, and was swinging a plump pigeon and a limp rabbit by their necks as he thumped along the tunnel.

Now he would be able to feed Oval Pebble. The big boar had lasted much longer than his last pet, Gravel, the mountain sheep. Stone-Water-Worn-Smooth thought hard and decided that it was because Oval Pebble was not fussy over what it ate. Stone-Water was looking forward to Oval Pebble running over to him and tickling him with his big tusks, like he did every time he could reach him.

Stone-Water nearly hummed as he rounded the last twist of the passage that led home, only to cry out in dismay at the sight that met him.

Granite-Glinting-Crystal, while the most beautiful cave troll of her generation, took up a lot of room in all her craggy hugeness; today she had rolled over in her sleep and crushed Oval Pebble with her elbow.

The Boar's head was quite flat and Stone-Water knew from experience that Oval Pebble was unlikely to run towards him again, even if he waited for a long time.

Stone-Water-Worn-Smooth kicked at his mother until she woke up.

"Look." He gestured towards the dead pig. "Look what you done."

His mother glanced at the mess beneath her elbow and winced. "Look what mess on my beautiful hide. Spent long time polishing." She sat up and twisted her arm in an effort to see the damage.

Stone-Water was exasperated. "Not your hide; Look what you done to my pet."

Granite-Glinting swiped at his head, then shuffled over to the stream that crossed the corner of the cave and bent to dip her arm in the water.

Stone-Water went and got a flat bit of bone.

 "All you care about is self," he grumbled as he scraped the remains of his pet off the floor.

Still muttering, he tipped the carcass down the rubbish hole and threw the flat bone down after it.

His mother turned a considering look on him, then looked down at as much of her encrusted bulk as she could see.

"I go out." She announced after a while.

 "Black-Rock-Burns and Snow-Boulder fight for me. I watch."

She shambled past her son and patted him heavily on the back.

"Keep telling you, Son, stop bringing pets home. They always die, then you always get mad."

She left, and Stone-Water-Worn-Smooth crouched in the middle of their cave, amongst all the pretty shiny things, and felt aggrieved.

After a time he grabbed his club again and took to the tunnels.

"I'll show her, I get another pet."

 00000

Gimli was beginning to suspect that following Gleowyn might not have been the most sensible thing he had done in the last year or so.

His dark adapted Dwarven sight had made following the party through the first part of the Forbidden Paths easy, their heat left a ghostly image on the air.

Legolas' miruvor had given him a sense of strength allowing him to arrive at the formerly closed door of Baldor's doom in good time. Now that boosted strength had left him, and when he put his good right hand up to his left shoulder he could feel a large cold wet patch, and another down his side, soaking the top of the leggings.

He leant back on the wall beside the door and tried to draw some further strength from the mountain roots around him.

He looked for the remains that had lain at the door for countless years.

They had been pushed out of the way by the arc formed by the opening of the door into the passage; the slab remained propped ajar by two broken pieces of rock. Baldor's gem encrusted belt had vanished and somehow that disgusted him even more than the abduction of an innocent girl and the desecration of this ancient place.

The air flowing down into the main cavern from the side passage was cold and smelled of mould and old rot, but it was the way the party had taken. Although the trace was faint he could still see the long worm of their heat image stretching up the slope.

After a moment or two he decided he was as well as he was going to get, pushed himself off with his good hand and plodded into the passage.

The heat trace was dissipating quickly, so Gimli tried to hurry, past a honeycomb of deep niches carved in the walls.

Burial chambers he supposed.

Once or twice side passages loomed to the right or left but the wisp of heat carried ever on and Gimli gritted his teeth and followed.

The pain in his shoulder was becoming all consuming, and he had to stop again to move his pack even further over to the right.

He leant his axe against the tunnel wall, and then wandered on forgetting it.

He felt pain in his right side and dropped the heavy weight that tugged on it and walked lighter for a little while.

He tried to remember what he was following, and leaned against the tunnel wall to think, his helmet tipped forward in front of his eyes so he took it off and dropped it when he remembered that he was following a heat trace and there was a great big one going to the left.

This tunnel was wide and the trace was easy, and then he found himself on his knees and his palms were smarting from their sudden contact with the cold floor

"I will not crawl in the dark, again." He thought to himself, fuzzily; and struggled to his feet.

The large heat source was right in front of him and as he struggled to focus on it, it seemed to be peering back at him.

A huge gnarled finger poked him, and he fell down again, with the world nauseatingly swimming in and out of focus. The small part of him that was in the world heard a voice like a mountain say, surprised.

"A dwarf. I haven't had a dwarf for centuries."

Then a rock-like hand wrapped itself around his torso and picked him up; the pain was so intense Gimli passed out completely.

Stone-Water-Worn-Smooth was very pleased. A dwarf lasted a long, long time. He sniffed at his prize. Then frowned. Red stuff. His mother's scathing words came back to him.

"The only ones you can catch are sick. They all die, and then their kin bring our people trouble. No more two legs as pets."

Well she would be gone for at least two weeks and he would show her.

He would make this one well, and keep him in a safer place than Oval Pebble, and then she would see he could keep a pet. Even a sick one.

Mentally he thumbed his nose at his mother, and patted the dwarf on the back, eliciting a feeble groan.

Stone-Water-Worn-Smooth smiled happily, and stumped off back home.

 00000

Gleowyn stood with the group of Wose women and looked hungrily around the circle of tents making up the King's campsite.

Lord Legolas had come to them in the forest, handed something to the warriors that appeased their fears, then approached her and asked her softly if she was well.

She could see him scanning the others and with a sinking heart knew who he was looking for, but before she could explain anything except that she was unharmed, she found herself drifting through the forest after him in the company of all the Wose tribe.

If it hadn't been for the coughs that marked their progress she could have fancied herself alone, for only her feet made any noise.

Now they stood in a moment out of time, in the middle of the encampment in the dark, in a ring of protective Wose warriors who were in their turn encircled by watchful soldiers in the livery of Gondor.

One of the babies started up a hiccupping cry and Gleowyn went and hefted the infant while her mother sat on the ground preparatory to nursing. As if it was a signal, all the women settled on the ground, coughing and wheezing intermittently.

Gleowyn handed the sniffling baby back to her mother and remained in her limbo, standing.

Finally she heard her name being called in a voice that she seemed to have been missing for a lifetime.

"Gleowyn." Shouted her father; and time snapped back into its normal groove as she saw him running towards her. Then she was enveloped in his strong embrace and her life started again.

TBC

Rose Sared

Reviews welcomed, treasured and replied too.

AU Fourth Age fusion of book and movie-verse. Set ninety eight years into Aragorn’s reign.

A:L:G  OC  Friendship fic. Not slash. PG for violence and some adult dilemmas in later chapters.

Angst/Adventure

Previously posted as Unbinding the Box

Adagio

Chapter six

Stone-Water-Worn-Smooth felt he had really tried.

For three whole weeks he cleaned out his pet's straw bedding every day, he changed the water in his bowl; he even peeled him out of his wrappings after the first few days when they started to smell bad.

Stone water called his pet Mossy-Rock, because when he looked at him out of his wrappings he decided he probably had enough fur to keep warm.

Stone-Water gave him some more bedding straw in case he wasn't warm enough, just to make sure.

When his mother came back home, after the spring mating, things got a bit more difficult.

She hated smells, so Stone-Water made sure he took away all the uneaten food and was even more careful with the bedding.

But whatever he did Mossy would not eat. He offered him peeled meat, and unpeeled meat and grass and leaves and Mossy just left everything.

Mossy did not do much really, especially now.

Stone-Water-Worn-Smooth slouched in front of his pet's cage and remembered. He had definitely been more active in the first days.

Stone-Water had enjoyed watching him explore the little cup shaped cave he was keeping him in. Mossy's attempts to climb out had been very funny and Stone-Water had remembered some of his more colourful curses by saying them over and over again to himself.

Stone-Water felt sad, Mossy had not even touched the slimy rockfish he had brought for him today.

In fact, now he had time to think, since his mother had come home Mossy seemed to spend most of his time lying down, and the places the red stuff had come out of looked bigger and leaked smelly stuff.

 Stone-Water stood on his special rock again and peered in at his captive. Nope, not even the water touched today.

Granite-Gleaming-Crystal watched her son as he fussed over the niche high in the wall where he was keeping his latest pet then watched him as he pottered out of the cave again with his arms full of used bedding.

In a way she was pleased because his little project had kept him busy at a time when she was a bit distracted. She felt most pleased with the outcome of the fight this year.

But now, she knew the signs, his whatever it was, was dying, and her little splinter was distressed.

She rumbled across and tried to see into the niche, but it was just above her eye height and if she stood on the rock Stony used, her head hit the ceiling, bending was not one of her talents

The smell of the animal was familiar but she couldn't quite place it, so overlaid it was with the smell of its sickness. She could hear its rattling breathing, so at least it was not dead yet.

Stone-Water came back in again then and saw his mother by the cage. He slumped a bit.

"Is it dead then?"

His mother looked at him, it was such a shame really, and he did try to be a good boy.

"Not yet," she replied brightly. "What do you have for it today?"

Stone-Water glumly held up a bundle of bedding grasses and a bowl of water.

"It won't eat. I think I might have to kill it soon if it doesn't die. You always say it's not fair to keep a pet suffering."

Granite-Gleaming got ponderously down from the rock and took the bedding from her son.

"Do it now, Stony. The sooner it is over the sooner you can go looking for another piggy. That lasted well, and I promise I will be more careful this time. Do it now, and I will go out for a little walk. You know how I hate the squishing sound they make."

Stone-Water-Worn-Smooth nodded and watched his mother as she carefully put the bundle of straw on a ledge and left the cave.

He sighed; it would have been so good to have had the dwarf for a long, long time.

He put the water bowl down and climbed on his rock to peer in at his pet. It was sprawled on its back where he had left it after cleaning out the old straw, quite still except for the rasping of its breath.

He reached in with both hands and gently scooped it out, then went over to the middle of the living area of the cave and squatted down to look at it.

It neither groaned nor squirmed and he knew that was not good. He looked at Mossy-Rock for a long time and felt very sad, but his mother was right as usual, the dwarf was not going to get better, he was mostly bones now anyway.

Stone-Water shifted his slight weight onto the palm of one broad hand and reached for a handy rock with the other. Best get it over with; he could hear his mother hurrying back to the cave.

00000

 Gleowyn felt more herself after she had bathed and dressed herself in clean, if borrowed, clothes. She was brushing her hair, out by the fire in front of her father's tent, when Frecern appeared out of the shadows.

"My love, my little flower, I was so worried…" He got no further.

Gleowyn jumped to her feet with an energy that surprised him, stepped forward and slapped him so hard around the face that he took an involuntary two steps backwards.

From simpering insincerity a look of black anger crossed his expression before he could smooth his features into a more acceptable surprise.

"And that," thought Gleowyn, "is probably the most honest thing he has ever shown to me."

She didn't let him find his balance, stalking forward into his space.

"Does the 'Great Cow' ring any bells, or would you like 'Come to the stables sweeting she's gone out'."

A look of both horror and disgust crossed Frecern's handsome face.

 "That tattling Dwarf…"

Once again he took a roundhouse blow to his jaw, swung this time with so much force behind it that he fell to his backside in confusion. Gleowyn shook her aching hand and then aimed a kick at his prostrate form.

She was incandescent with rage.

"How dare you. How dare you when you are not fit to lick the dirt from his boots."

She spotted her astounded father hovering in the background along with a highly entertained group of soldiers and the messenger, Telfaren.

Stepping over the prostrate man she stalked up to Bardor still fuming.

"Father, I am sorry but I will not," she turned to pin the hapless man with another glare then turned back to her parent, "not, marry that, that worm."

"You tell 'im, love." Came from the crowd, followed by jovial laughter.

Frecern finally managed to scramble to his feet, and occupied himself with dusting off his clothes, Bardor still gaped at his daughter.

"My dove, if you are sure, but…?" Gleowyn placed a hand on his arm.

"No buts, Father. I will explain further," she looked at the audience then back at her parent. "When we are more private, perhaps?"

Frecern made himself scarce, and Bardor looked after him, and then seemed to pull himself together.

"Well, yes, perhaps later."

He shook his head, still disbelieving, and then he turned a more serious look on his daughter.

 "Gleowyn, the King has requested your presence, my dear. If you are up to it?" He asked anxiously.

Gleowyn briefly closed her eyes. She rather doubted she was ever going to be up to this interview. Well, putting it off would not improve matters.

She slipped her arm in that of her father. "Can you escort me then, please Dada?"

Bardor smiled at the diminutive, and led her away to the King's pavilion.

Aragorn sat in his carved chair and felt the weight of his kingship settle over his shoulders like a velvet cloak. This was his right and duty; to dispense such justice as was called for, as wisely as possible.

To his left sat Legolas who was all Elf-Lord now, beautiful and inscrutable. To his right, the dwarf Gliver, Lord of Aglarond with Gimli's passing, and behind him three other dwarves, whose names Aragorn had yet to allocate to precise individuals.

In front of them, sitting on the ground from preference, was the Woses' chieftain, Ghunkor-buri-Ghan, squat and proud but here of his own will.

The tent flap was lifted by one of the door guards and Gleowyn and her father, the Master Smith, entered, and then stopped, as they became the focus of all eyes.

In her turn Gleowyn scanned the company, then quickly dropped them all a deep curtsey; Aragorn was amused to see that polish applied by his Queen didn't wear off.

Bardor bowed also, and then Aragorn's discreet servants led the pair to the seats prepared for them.

Aragorn was intrigued to see that the knuckles on Gleowyn's hands were grazed. Had she been male he might have suspected her of brawling.

"Gleowyn."

The king allowed the pair to get settled then continued.

"We have heard from Ghunkor-buri-Ghan here," he waved a hand in the chief's direction.

"Of his part in these unfortunate events, and heard also of his remorse and the steps he has taken in retribution."

The King looked at the chief, who leaned forward and touched his head to the floor in submission.

The King then pinned Gleowyn in the intense light of his gaze.

"It remains for us to hear your story and perhaps the reason for some of these strange happenings."

Gleowyn sighed deeply, and then raised her chin to meet Aragorn's regard.

"It's a silly girl's tale, Sire. Not one part of it gives me any pride regarding my behaviour, but as you know, my Lord Gimli was the soul of compassion and it was his kindness that led him to his doom."

Her eyes welled with the emotion of the telling but she would not be deterred now she was well launched. She blinked crossly and carried on.

"The Lord of Aglarond was present when chance allowed me to find out the false nature of the man I had thought loved me."

Her struggle for control was obvious, but so was her will.

"I was distraught, you understand, Sire. So shamed I told no one of my distress. I fled to my mother's grave, hard under Dunharrow, but found no ease there either. Disordered in my mind I took the fancy to end my torment by casting myself from the cliff-top."

She glanced worriedly at her father who had gasped at her confession.

"I am sorry, Father, to tell such tales, but as I said, I was not in my right mind."

She wiped impatiently at her face, looking anything but diminished in her faculties now.

"My Lord Gimli must have spotted me ascending the cliff path. I am not sure how he came to be there, but when I responded not, he followed me; and when in my distress and grief I attempted to harm myself, he prevented me."

She paused for a second to sniff mightily and wipe the tears that would not be denied from her cheeks. Taking a deep breath she continued.

"He endured my tantrums, and then, when I was calmer, he led me back out of the wind to a camp in the trees."

She stood then, and brought a small carefully folded bundle of cloth to the King. He received it, recognised it, and turned to give it to Legolas. The Elf fingered the leaf broach and did not look up.

"He loaned me that cloak when I was chilled, fed me when I was hungry, and was taken completely unawares when he was shot twice by the arrows of the Woses warriors that had come for me. One arrow took him here."

She placed a hand on her right side, "the other here."

She indicated her left shoulder.

"He fell clear of the fire, but that was the last that I saw of him, for the warriors were many and I was terrified. They bound me and then carried me off."

She turned then and fixed the Wose chieftain with her bleakest look.

 "His warriors give no warnings, Sire."

She shook her head at the remembered horror of it all.

"And although Ghunkor-buri-Ghan's justice was swift and final it changed nothing of the outcome of that raid."

She turned back to the assembled Lords and bowed her head. " I am so sorry."

Her father stood then, put an arm around her shoulders, and led her back to her chair, leaving the company to sit for a while in heavy silence.

Bardor then turned back to the Lords looking perplexed. Aragorn lifted a hand in permission for the man to speak.

"King Elessar, one thing of all this tale remains a mystery. Where is Lord Gimli's body and all his gear?"

Legolas exchanged looks with Aragorn; they had discussed the matter themselves. Aragorn leaned forward.

"We have a similar curiosity, Master Smith. Was the Firienfield searched thoroughly then?"

Bardor creased his brow in thought.

 " It was, Sire. I myself rode down to the Dimholt and cast into the forest on either side. I even remember seeing the remains of a campfire near the road. But that was all I saw. There was no body and no gear. Believe me, after our finding of Gleowyn's bloodied garment I was looking for a body."

Gleowyn winced in sympathy; she would not have willingly brought him pain.

Gliver now spoke up. " Did you not enter the tunnel?"

Bardor shuddered. "Nay, it is still a fell place, my Lord." He looked at Aragorn. "Even without its ghosts it does not invite entry."

"Yet it is the route by which I was taken." Gleowyn spoke up again.

Ghunkor nodded.

"So we have a mystery."

Aragorn looked first at Legolas then, more doubtfully, at the very unhappy seeming dwarves.

"If I go now," Legolas jumped up. "I could be there by first light. Aragorn, please."

"He is our Lord." Complained Gliver in an irritated growl. "We will look for him."

Legolas shot the dwarf a look that Aragorn hadn't seen since Rivendell. It was full of menace.

"Hold, Legolas, Gliver."

He grabbed the Elf's arm.

 "Please Legolas, could you not carry Lord Gliver, as you are wont to carry Gimli, on horseback you would still both be there at daylight."

Both parties looked as if someone had cracked a cooked egg under their noses. Then the urgency of the situation seemed to overcome prejudice and the Elf and the dwarf shared a weighing look.

Aragorn released Legolas' arm, and Gliver turned and consulted briefly with his three companions; then turned back to the Elf.

"Will you bear me then, my Lord?"

Legolas bowed slightly to the dwarf. "If you can bear me, my Lord Gliver. Shall we away?"

And with that they were gone.

Aragorn sat back in his chair and regarded Ghunkor-buri-Ghan.

"Are your people housed to their satisfaction this night, Chief?"

"They await your coming, Stone-city King."

Aragorn felt the cost of the hours in this day and shook his head.

"At first light I will come, Chief. Let them be prepared."

The Wose knocked his head on the ground once more and then left the tent. The three dwarves followed.

"By your leave, we will depart for Aglarond in the morning, Sire. The colony must be informed of these events."

Aragorn waved them out and looked at the Smith and his daughter.

Gleowyn's face had the light of wild hope in it. "Do you think they will find him alive?"

Aragorn hoped so, and said so.

"But it has been three weeks or more since he was shot, Mistress Gleowyn. Have not too much hope in his survival."

Gleowyn curtseyed again and the pair left, leaving Aragorn in his pavilion, trying very hard to believe in miracles.

00000 

If Gliver had ever spent a more uncomfortable night in his relatively long life, he could not immediately call it to mind.

The Elf had not addressed a single word to him for eight hours with the exception of "Hold on."

The horse Ascallon seemed as tall as one of the elves' blessed trees, and he ached in places he would not mention to his wife, let alone the silent being in front of him.

Finally on the last zigzag ascent to the Firienfield his humiliation seemed complete when the weary animal missed its stride, pitching him sideways.

For a moment he thought he would fall to meet the silvery Snowbourn so far below. Gliver was amazed and grateful for the remarkable reflexes and strength in the slim arm that caught him and righted him with ease.

His relief made him thank the Elf with some warmth; his only answer was the glitter of the sun in the Elf's blue eye as he regarded his passenger. Finally the Elf nodded and they passed on up onto the grassy heath and continued for a short space down the saw toothed path leading to the Haunted Mountain.

Legolas leapt lightly from Ascallon's back. Then reached, out of pure habit, to swing down his companion. His jolt of hesitation as he remembered that this was not his friend of years was obvious even to Gliver.

"Your assistance would be appreciated, my Lord." Said Gliver gravely. "I have a fear I have frozen in this position."

Legolas gave Gliver a grateful twitch of his lips, which was as much as he could manage with the anxiety that was gnawing at his insides and beating down his spirit.

He helped the dwarf to dismount and turned to strip the animal of its saddlebags. Then turned back to the dwarf, who thought he might venture a step or two in the next week, perhaps.

"My apologies, Gliver. I fear I have been little company over this long night. My heart quails at what we might find this morn."

Gliver shook his head.

"Let us not borrow trouble, my Lord. Come, shall we not find the campsite as a starting point?"

Legolas nodded glumly and the two of them scouted from standing stone to standing stone until they found the one with an old fire site scattered in front of it.

Legolas darted into the clearing looking intently at the ground, then bent and picked up two arrows that had been almost hidden by the new spring growth of grass.

"See, Gliver, on the points of these two." The blackish flakes of old blood needed no explanation.

Gliver stooped also, and picked up the third arrow. He held it up to the light then showed Legolas the glint of oil still clinging to the point.

"Poisoned?" Asked Gliver.

Legolas took the arrow and sniffed it, then shrugged.

 "It has lain too long in the open to be sure."

He tucked it with the others into his quiver. One thing was for sure; Aragorn would want to see them.

They both turned and looked down the trail to the Dimholt, gaping at the end of the path.

"Should we waste time searching here; or follow, my Lord." Gliver asked with a challenge in his voice.

"I doubt if a dead person pulled those arrows." Replied the Elf. He shared a feral grin with the Dwarf.

"Let's go.”

 TBC

 Reviews welcomed, treasured and replied to.

Rose Sared

AU Fourth Age fusion of book and movie-verse. Set ninety eight years into Aragorn’s reign.

A:L:G  OC  Friendship fic. Not slash. PG for violence and some adult dilemmas in later chapters.

Angst/Adventure

Previously posted as Unbinding the Box

Adagio

Chapter seven

Adagio

Chapter seven

Cautiously the Elf and the dwarf entered the Forbidden Path under its carved lintel by the last standing stone. The torches Legolas had brought from the King's camp flickered, their yellow flames folding almost flat in the dank air flowing from under the mountain.

It was easy enough to follow the trail left by various scuffmarks in the dust, so Gliver let the Elf set the pace as he cast a professional eye over the stonework. He was impressed, this part of the path had been hewn through rocks even dwarves gave respect, granite with obsidian seams and inclusions of glinting quartz. It was no miners slot either, tall enough for a mounted rider and wide enough for four men abreast, a mighty work.

He was even more impressed as they reached the great widening, this was a truly impressive space, mostly carved by water but squared and finished by skilled hands in ancient times. Strange runes ran in friezes around the walls and he stopped for a moment raising his torch to see if he could make any sense of them. He was recalled abruptly to his task by Legolas' hail.

"Bring the torch over here Gliver, by this door."

Legolas was looking at the floor and the wall near the door. Casting back he followed a line of dark splatters to the opening then, with the extra light provided by Gliver's torch he examined a handprint on the wall.

Gliver put his own hand up in a measuring way; the print was of a size with his hand. Legolas brought his own torch even closer then turned to Gliver.

 "Look, there is a line running across the palm."

Legolas remembered the sliced gauntlet he had examined, what seemed a lifetime ago in Minas Tirith.

"This is his." He stated without doubt.

The pair of them looked into the passage ahead, Legolas stooped again and motioned Gliver's torch down. A trail of dark spots could be seen disappearing into the dark.

His face must have told of his anguish because Gliver stepped forward then and placed a firm hand on his shoulder.

"Aule made us tough, Elf. If there is any way he could survive, he will be alive."

Legolas still looked bleak.

"And if we are too late, and he died in this pit of darkness, friendless?" He shuddered.

Gliver actually laughed. "My Lord, only to your kind is this a 'pit of darkness'. Nay, the stones sustain us, cradle us and a dwarf could find no kinder fate. Save your mourning for his bones, his surroundings would not have dismayed him."

Legolas looked at him searchingly, and then nodded at what was probably the truth.

They hurried on, and then Legolas gave a wondering cry. Gimli's axe. It was propped against the tunnel wall as if its owner had stepped away for only a moment.

The narrow tunnel allowed for no missing a body though; he was not here.

Legolas even peered into the deep niches carved into the tunnel walls. They were equally empty, of anything.

Puzzled Legolas gestured at the slots. "What do you think these were for, Gliver?"

"Bones, my Lord. I would think we are walking through an ancient tomb."

"I also," Legolas agreed, "But where are the bones now?"

Gliver snorted at his naivety.

"Cave trolls most likely, my Lord." Legolas looked at him askance.

"They cultivate some vile fungus that grows on them, it causes the bones to glow. Most old cave troll dens are quite light from it. It is thought they do it to show off the bright things they hoard. Trolls, phaugh, they are worse than magpies or dragons for collecting, nothing bright is sacred."

They moved on and found Gimli's discarded pack and helmet.

Gliver sniffed the air that flowed past them, he stayed Legolas again.

"There are definitely cave trolls near here, my Lord."

He hefted Gimli's axe and Legolas readied his bow. They crept on to the intersection with the wide cross-corridor with great caution.

Gliver's hand tightened on his arm again and Legolas heard a rhythmic grating sound approaching down the corridor on the left.

"Mostly they avoid confrontation, my Lord." Gliver whispered.

As if the invisible being had heard him they heard the thumping stop, then they heard it retreating, quickly, back the way it had come.

 00000

Granite-Glinting-Crystal was uneasy, so tuned to her mountain she could feel the turn of a season, now she knew there were intruders in the tunnels.

She touched the walls and felt their vibration in the stone.

Two; trouble for her if they wanted to bring it. She waited sniffing for their scent, and when she finally caught it in a stray eddy from down passage realisation slammed into her slow brain.

That was dwarf, and, rock of her father, Elf.

Her memory took her back through the centuries to when she had been the merest shard.

Then her people had lived in the Misty Mountains above Hollin. Dwarfs and elves had passed through the passages used by her family looking for the shining stone. She had found a dwarf, one day, pinned under a pile of slipped rock, and poked at him with her finger until he went still and cold.

Then a big crowd of elves and dwarves had bothered her folk and driven them from their old home.

Another memory teased her. Stone- Water-Worn-Smooth's pet, the smell under the sickness.

Granite-Glinting turned and started back to her cave moving as quickly as possible. The new pet was a two leg, a dwarf. And if she were not quick it would all happen again.

"Stone-Water, not kill."

She shouted in desperation as she neared the mouth of her home. She could feel the Elf coming up behind her in its tricksy silent way.

She rounded the door and the Elf slipped under her knees and scuttled to the side even as she swiped at him.

It had one of those weapons that could kill in its hands, so she tried to keep her bulk between the Elf and her son while at the same time straining to see if she had been in time to stop Stony from completing his mercy killing.

 00000

Legolas had had a sudden premonition.

With no time for explanation he thrust his torch into Gliver's startled hand and sprinted off after the retreating cave troll.

He never afterwards could tell why he was so sure; perhaps it was Gliver's tale of the collecting habits of trolls or their fondness for bones. He just knew he would find Gimli, dead or alive if he followed the troll.

If he was surprised to hear the troll speak in twisted common, he had no time to register it, given the horror of its words.

Ahead he could see the sickly glow of phosphorescence coming from an opening, so he skipped around the ponderous bulk of the huge troll and darted inside, easily avoiding the clumsy swipe that whistled over his head.

He saw a large open space, lit throughout by the green glow of the bones stacked in the corners, the walls had many ledges on which were piled helmets and bits of armour, old weapons and broken jewellery.

In the middle of the floor, near a black stream that flowed into and then out of the cave, was another smaller troll, holding a body in one hand and a rock in the other.

It was gaping at the large troll in confusion.

Legolas let fly an arrow that took the rock out of the hand of the small troll, then re-nocked so quickly it defied the eye, and let the point waver between the smaller and larger troll.

There was a pause for perhaps a breath, then Legolas could hear Gliver stumping up the tunnel behind him, and the large troll reached over the smaller troll's shoulder, picked the limp body out of her child's hand, swatted the smaller troll upside of the head with her other hand sending it sprawling across the floor, and then turned to thrust Stone-Water-Worn-Smoothly's prize at the astonished Elf.

"Take."

Glancing over his shoulder at Gliver who had finally arrived the doorway and could cover him, Legolas shouldered his bow and reached out, and then into his arms was poured the naked, barely living body of his friend, Gimli.

 Legolas could hold him easily. He weighted less than a hobbit, was burning with fever and was quite unconscious.

But still he lived.

The giant troll squatted sniffing.

"It lives." She fixed the Elf with her huge eyes. 'No trouble want we."

She stood again and kicked at her son who was just trying to climb to his feet.

"He stupid. He young. He never again forgets, No, two, leg, pets." She punctuated each word with a blow.

The smaller troll cowered.

Legolas winced.

Gliver looked a question at the Elf who shifted his friend slightly so Gimli's head rested against his shoulder.

"No trouble, mountain mother." He said finally, wanting to get out of there before Gimli died in his arms.

Granite-Glinting-Crystal held his gaze for a moment then turned back to her son, dismissing him.

Legolas walked carefully out of the cave, and then the two companions fled down the dark halls until they emerged into the light rain falling on the Firienfield grasses.

 00000

Legolas stood for a space with his face turned up to the clean drizzle, silently giving thanks to Manwe for this chance to make a new start.

The misting rain made a net of silver in Gimli's matted hair and the Elf squeezed him slightly tighter, as if to impart some of his own health and life.

Meanwhile, Gliver shed both his and Gimli's packs and then rummaged around in the depths of his own. Quickly he produced a woollen cloak and approached the Elf with it open in his arms.

Legolas sighed and helped Gliver to wrap his friend in the warm material. Then he sat on the damp ground and balanced Gimli across his lap.

Gliver finger-combed a strand of hair off Gimli's slack face leaving a pale streak in the grime that marred his features.

"What shall we do, Legolas?" Gliver squatted down beside the Elf and watched his friend breathing for a space.

Legolas hunched over Gimli a little more to shelter him from the rain and was silent for a moment, and then he looked at the concerned dwarf.

"We need to get him to the King." He stated.

 "I have not the skills to help him heal."

His expression went a little vacant as he focussed inwardly, then his gaze sharpened again and he looked at Gliver.

"His flame of life is so weak, and feel, he is burning what reserves he has left."

Gliver rested a gnarled hand on his Lord's chest and felt the fever that was consuming him.

"Can your horse manage the return trip?"

Legolas looked worried. "I could ask her."

Once again the Elf tightened his grip on his friend, pressing Gimli's head against his heart in a tender gesture

Gliver found most moving. Indeed when the Elf met the dwarf's eye again tears threatened for both of them.

"Would you hold him?" Asked Legolas with a degree of reluctance.

He had the absurd feeling that should he lose physical contact with his friend, Gimli would leave him forever.

In answer Gliver sat himself with his back against a handy standing stone and held out his arms.

Legolas moved Gimli as if he were made of delicate pottery instead of the sort of iron he had proved from his endurance. Then, after a long look, he trotted off up the path to seek out Ascallon.

Gliver followed him with his eyes until he was lost to his sight, then turned and spoke conversationally to his limp charge.

"I hope you know how well you are loved, my old friend."

 He patted Gimli on the back gently, as if he were comforting his baby son.

"You have been most sorely missed."

 00000

Legolas gave a shout of joy when he finally found Ascallon near the cliff path. With her was one of the powerful and intelligent stallions of Rohan; surely a Mearas of the old blood so close was his resemblance to Gandalf's Shadowfax.

Legolas bowed most sincerely to the horse. The stallion nodded its head to him. Trying to mask his anxiety Legolas related the events of the last day and then made his request.

The stallion snorted and trotted in a small arc, head and tail arched, as if to ask who was this that asked such a favour.

Ascallon snorted in a derogatory manner and nipped at him as he pranced past.

The stallion's head came down, and if a horse could look sheepish he managed it.

Legolas asked again and Ascallon whinnied at the great animal, and finally he chose to approach the Elf and sniff at his clothes and weapons. He had a little lip at a strand of the Elf's hair, then stood like a palfrey and allowed the Elf to mount.

So Gliver saw him, approaching like a legend on the back of a horse so tall the dwarf wondered how he was going to get his patient up there. But the horse was gracious in his submission and bent a leg at the Elf's urging, so Legolas could reach for Gimli and install him on the broad back in front of him.

"Shall I send your people to you?" Asked Legolas of Gliver, who was handing up Gimli's pack and weapons for the Elf to stow about his person.

"Nay," scoffed the dwarf. "I am no maiden needing protection, and am but a few days from our home."

He placed a warm hand on the Elf's leg. "Go swiftly, my Lord. And send us news as soon as you may."

Legolas bowed his head and graced the dwarf with one of his rare smiles.

" Thank you, Gliver, heir of Gimli. As ever my friend chose well when he chose you to succeed him." Gliver blushed and stepped back grumpily.

"Begone, Sir Elf, lest I inherit far too soon."

Then Legolas wheeled the animal round, and in a heartbeat they were lost in the mist of rain that greyed the end of the day.

 00000

By nightfall they were rounding the knees of Starkhorn and could see the lights of Edoras twinkling on its hill like a promise of ease. The rain had stopped but looking ahead, across the Eastfold, Legolas could see a spring storm flashing and crashing its way down the valley of East Emnet. The thunder was growling round the sky, alternately loud then distant but there was no doubt the weather would intersect their path before long. And the distant booming must have reached something in Gimli because he started to stir, straining fitfully against Legolas' hold.

"Cloudfoot, we must find shelter and I think it had best be the city. Wilst thou carry us even there?"

Cloudfoot stood four square on the small hillock they had paused on, pawed the earth and trumpeted his wild neigh to the empty plains. Then shook his head and turned for the gilded hall of Meduseld.

Swift was his stride but the storm was swifter, by the time Legolas was in front of the city gates the rain was torrential and the thunder so loud that the very air seemed to shake. Gimli was now fighting him with dumb obstinacy and Legolas was never so grateful as when the gate guard spotted them and challenged their passage.

"Lord Legolas of Ithilien, with a companion sore wounded. Will you allow us entry and shelter from this storm?"

The guard could not take his eyes off the Elf's horse.

"My Lord, where such as he comes who am I to say nay. Shall I provide an escort to our healing house?"

"Aye, and housing for my Lord horse here if it please you."

Legolas managed to slide off Cloudfoot's back with Gimli still in his arms. He went to the stallion's head.

"In the morning we will continue, if it please you to partake of the city's hospitality and wait." The horse snorted at him but was nothing loathe to spend a night in the warm with oats on hand.

Gimli groaned weakly then, and his eyelids fluttered as if he were trying to wake.

 "Come my Lord." Said a second guard, who had the look of one who had been dozing a few minutes before.

Legolas followed him through the storm to the nearby healing house, and stepped inside, still holding his friend, then waited as the guard roused the duty healer. He was aware of dripping almost shamefully on the clean stone floor, of the calm and peace of the hall, all being disturbed now as a dumpy woman hurried up with the soldier at her shoulder. She held up a lamp and looked in a professional way at Gimli's face then glanced up at the weary, soaked, Elf that held him.

"Come, my Lords. Let us start setting things to rights."

She trotted off and Legolas followed, never more grateful in his life for the limitless compassion of humans.

 00000

A mighty crash of thunder followed by a long stuttering flash and another crash that rattled the glass on his beside tray, sat Aragorn bolt upright with his heart racing, reaching for his sword.

Lightening flashed again, silhouetting every object in his tent, and, as the thunder boomed, Aragorn lay back down again and rubbed a tired hand over his face.

He had been deeply asleep following his day working with the Woses tribal people and their children.

 Each individual had needed his healing touch to redirect the wrongness that had settled in lungs and sometimes other organs.

He had finally been chased off to bed by Sarthor, the healer who had come from Minas Tirith with his team of helpers following Aragorn's urgent request the previous day. He had arrived in the late afternoon, disgustingly full of energy and he had all the usual healer's scorn for rank.

Mostly Aragorn found that attitude refreshing, but now as he lay looking into the night, worrying about Luin and her baby, Sarthor's edict that the King was not to show his face in the healer's tent until first light simply felt presumptuous.

Rain fell like a drum-roll onto the canvas above his head and Aragorn could hear the camp rousing to check picket lines and sagging awnings.

His own personal steward slipped into his tent with a shuttered lamp and a quiet "My Lord," and checked quickly for leaks.

Then he left and Aragorn was alone contemplating his strobing ceiling.

"Valar help my friends if they are out in this." He thought to himself.

Then the incessant rain lulled him, despite himself, back to sleep.

00000 

Legolas was an old campaigner, and like most warriors had the capacity to fall asleep whenever time and circumstance allowed him the ease to do so, and there was no doubt he was weary.

Even an Elf felt the strain of a night spent riding, followed by the excitements of the day and his ride to Edoras.

He still felt the weight on his spirit of the grief that had gaped like an abyss when Aragorn had announced Gimli dead, and he was afraid to hope too greatly that those dire tidings may not yet prove to be predictive rather than wrong.

Legolas was warm and dry, except for his hair, which still clung damply to his neck, clean, and dressed in spare clothes from his pack, and was installed in a large chair beside Gimli's bed.

His friend had also been washed thoroughly and the wounds in his shoulder and chest expertly cleaned and bound.

He lay, looking like a child, in the middle of the mattress drugged into sleep again because of his agitation had increased with the necessary medical procedures without bringing with it any sign of lucidity.

The healer had offered the Elf a bed of his own but not argued when Legolas had insisted on staying with his friend. Instead she had handed him a pillow and a blanket and left the room with the promise of returning at regular intervals throughout the night.

"Try to sleep. If you are determined to take him onwards tomorrow he will need your full attention."

Legolas could not find the peace he sought.

Instead he watched the rise and fall of Gimli's chest as it stirred his combed out beard and thought about why this being was so dear to him. He even missed his usual snoring.

Finally he scooted his chair forward, so he could reach Gimli's hand where it rested on the coverlet, clasped it in his own long fingered one, and then rested his head on the bed beside his friend.

"Please stay with me Elf-friend, you are the rock that binds me to this place. Without you I must away, and that is not the desire of my heart."

He fancied Gimli's fingers twitched in his, but nothing more did he feel although he lay as still as only an Elf could.

Later the healer came to check her patient and smiled to see the lanky Elf so folded and fast asleep.

After checking Gimli's breathing and temperature she gently draped the spare blanket over the Elf's back.

Stiff he would be in the morning she saw no reason he should be cold as well.

TBC

Reviews treasured and hoarded, my precious.

Rose

AU Fourth Age fusion of book and movie-verse. Set ninety eight years into Aragorn’s reign.

A:L:G  OC  Friendship fic. Not slash. PG for violence and some adult dilemmas in later chapters.

Angst/Adventure

Previously posted as Unbinding the Box

Adagio
Chapter Eight

Only in this moment, Gimli was fighting orcs, the hot thrill of battle filling him with savage joy, he felt completely and fully alive, dealing death with every screaming swing of the axe he had forged for himself.

Only in this moment, he cut through orc arms that spouted black blood, into orc middles that spilled entrails and, on the back swing, removed two orc heads.

 Only in this moment, he tasted orc blood and smelled orc guts and heard orc screams, and then walked forward to find new foes since all around him had fallen.

Only in this moment, he turned to shout an exuberant total to… He peered into the shifting mists veiling the rest of the battlefield; he could hear the blacksmith sound of fighting somewhere ahead.

 He walked forward, the dead so many obstacles to step over. A black wall loomed, fine stonework, he noted. The bodies changed under his feet, now some wore leather armour, golden hair spilled from under leaf shaped helms. He looked down at the warrior sprawled at his feet that grey leather jerkin looked familiar.

 Golden hair all in disarray except for the warrior braids holding it back from the sides of his face. The bow still clutched in his hand looked familiar. The mist drifted in front of him again, so he reached down to touch the yellow hair and it was Legolas.

 Dead.

Gimli yelled "No" but he was mute, and still could feel the soft yellow hair beneath his hand.

Again he yelled and still no sound came from his mouth.

He started to fight this unnatural muzzling, his grief needed expression. He shook his head from side to side. Of a sudden he became aware that his eyes were shut, again he tried to open them, to speak, anything.

Then at last he felt a strong hand in his and heard someone singing softly.

He knew that voice and it comforted him. He tried again to open his eyes to confirm the dream was a nightmare and nothing more, but was lulled back to sleep before he could succeed.

Legolas faltered in his song, for a moment Gimli had looked like he was waking, his eyes had flicked under their closed lids and he had squeezed the Elf's hand, but now he had gone slack again.

Legolas looked up at the healer who just then entered the room, new to him this morning but of the same opinion as the kindly woman of the night before.

If he moved Gimli further he would kill him.

So Legolas had worn away the tedious morning with song and snatches of sleep. Now it was near to day meal and the healer had come with a tray of broth to coax some much-needed nutrition into the wasted dwarf. Legolas sighed and disengaged his hand from that of his friend.

"Master healer, if we are not to travel I must speak both to King Elfwine and send a messenger to my liege, King Elessar, who waits for us on Rohan's border. Also I have an errand in the stables, for my horse Cloudfoot must be freed from his obligation.

Will it be possible for you to stay with Gimli?"

"If not myself, then someone I trust, my Lord."

Legolas bowed to him and left the room reluctantly, but he had much to do.

0000

King Elfwine the Fair had been ruler of Rohan since the death of his father nearly twenty-four years ago.

"So stage fright," Elfwine thought, "is simply ridiculous."

owever he had a sinking feeling that the Lord of Ithilien had dandled him on his knee when he was but a babe, and since then, although the Lord Legolas had visited the kingdom frequently in the company of the King of Gondor or more frequently in the company of the Lord of Aglarond and most commonly in the company of them both, it was nonetheless true, that in all that time, he had never had to deal with the Elf Lord, by himself, as one prince to another.

 And now he had to address issues that he could guarantee would not sit well with the ever-young looking Elf.

Rumours about his friend the equally durable Lord of Aglarond, who was at this present time in Edoras' House of Healing, teetering between life and death if his advisors had informed him correctly.

The same advisors who were telling him of a growing swell of discontent in his population concerning the perceived advantages that were held by the colony of dwarfs nigh on Rohan's shoulder, at Aglarond.

Tales were being told of greed and envy, which said more of the tellers than any slight proffered by the dwarves, of that Elfwine was sure. But the alacrity with which the tale of the maiden abducted and dishonoured by the evil dwarf had spread round the alehouses and meeting places in the city told Elfwine something of the mood of his people.

He wanted to tell Legolas to be careful, and that was a responsibility he would have gladly handed to someone else. Anyone else.

Hence his unaccustomed nerves, as the Lord of Ithilien was announced and then strode down the dim length of the great hall towards him, shining slightly in the shafts of light like some legend embroidered on the venerable tapestries that decorated the walls.

"King Elfwine, thank you for seeing me at such short notice," Legolas bowed with his hand on his heart.

"My Lord Legolas." Elfwine stood and walked down the steps in front of the throne to meet the Elf. "Come, sit with me, I believe you have a tale to tell."

The King led Legolas over to a table set up nearby and with his own hands poured the Elf a goblet of good Ithilien red. At least he knew what Legolas liked to drink, he thought to himself.

"How is the Lord Gimli?" He prompted gently.

Legolas took a sip of his wine, looked at it with appreciation, and then turned to the King. "He is gravely ill, Elfwine." He shook his head mournfully. "Have you heard from King Elessar about the events that led up to the Master Smith's daughter's abduction?"

Elfwine tapped a half unrolled message scroll that was on top of a pile of others on the table.

"He has been most gracious in his sharing, every day he sends me the latest news, and earlier today I received this, which details the doings of my wayward vassals, the Woses." He smiled ruefully at the Elf. "He bids me consider what justice I would consider meet." He shook his head, "It would appear they have lost their homes, I can think of little I can do that would punish them further. But the girl is unharmed?"

He raised an eyebrow to Legolas, who nodded briefly. Elfwine sighed, mightily relieved.

"That is very good, my Lord."

Legolas looked at him slightly puzzled.

"Did you know the maid, Sire?"

Elfwine snorted in amusement.

 "My Lord Legolas, this is a small city, and the daughter of the Master Smith is not known for her retiring ways."

He smiled at some internal memory.

"But I confess that it is not really concern for her person that leaves me pleased that she is well."

He took a drink from his own goblet and narrowed his eyes at the Prince sitting opposite.

"No, my real concern was that I feared an enflaming of the vile rumours that have been spreading through the city against the dwarf race in general, and your good friend in particular."

He looked at the table for a moment not wanting to see the expression of dismay that was forming on Legolas' face.

"For some reason," he continued, "The common folk have started to take against our good friends and allies, the dwarves of Aglarond."

Elfwine watched as Legolas stiffened in outrage, and hurried on trying to placate him.

"I hope it is just end-of-winter discontent, my Lord."

He reached over the table and placed his hand gently over that of the Elf.

 "I will not tolerate it and have instructed my soldiers and guards they are to have no truck with such nonsense. They are to be swift and stamp it out if they come across any dwarf being harassed. But sometimes even kings and guards are powerless in the face of unreasoning prejudice."

Legolas was jolted out of his indignation by a sharp memory of his conversation with Aragorn regarding prejudice. Given Minuial's behaviour, Elves were not holding the moral high ground in the matter either.

"What has been happening, Elfwine? Have there been incidents?"

The King shook his head.

 "Barroom discontent only, so far. But it appears that instead of stopping the talk our strong reaction has meant the rumours are gaining strength from day to day. Only this morning the Queen told me of having to discipline a nursemaid who told Prince Eomer, in the Queen's hearing, that he "Should not come in from riding, all over filth like a stinking dwarf."

Legolas looked dismayed, and suddenly anxious for his friend who he had left in the care of strangers. He stood abruptly.

"Does King Elessar say when the Master Smith and his daughter are expected back?"

"No more than three days hence, my Lord. Then perhaps this hysteria will die down."

Legolas nodded, perhaps in three days Gimli would be well enough to travel again, and Legolas could remove him from this dangerous place. The Elf glanced around the hall suddenly aware of the city full of humans surrounding him, an isolated feeling he knew Gimli would share if only he were awake. A great longing for his trees and his kin swept over Legolas like a wave, he closed his eyes briefly to regain control.

 "I must get back to Gimli, Elfwine. My thanks for your honesty, and your support. We will remove ourselves as soon as we may, and then perhaps things will settle down for your people."

He rose, and bowing, left the King sitting.

Elfwine tasted the bitterness behind those words and pressed a finger against his eyebrow to quell the headache that wanted to establish itself there.

"That could have gone better." He thought.

00000

Frecern was in the process of unsaddling his horse when that filthy dwarf's Catamite, the effete looking Elf, Leg something or another, swept past in his poncy, arrogant, way.

"What the hell is he doing here?" He growled at the smudge-faced stable boy who was holding his horse's head.

The boy, Aldor, had followed the shining Lord's progress with something like hero worship in his eyes, but he quickly modified his expression to his usual blank sullenness as he turned to answer the smith. It did not pay to anger Frecern; his racist views were anything but secret.

"Dunno." The boy replied warily. "Got a nice horse." Aldor jerked his head at the end loose box.

Frecern's eyes widened as he saw the Mearas nuzzling the Elf's hair.

 "Is nothing sacred?"

The smith lifted the saddle and girth onto the partition and stood with his fists clenched staring at the pair.

"That's Rohan's, it belongs to the Rohirrim, what does he think he's doing stealing our heritage?"

Frecern turned his burning gaze back on the stable boy who was in the process of tying up his horse preparatory to grooming it.

Legolas walked past again, this time with the great stallion pacing him at his shoulder. Aldor could hear a stream of musical Sindarin, as if the Elf was having a conversation with the horse.

Frecern stepped into the shadows until the Elf was past, then he commenced swearing bitterly.

"…Between them and the dwarves we're buggered." He finished finally.

Aldor paused in his brushing to look at Frecern with some admiration. That was three new words and a really good insult he had just added to his collection.

"What did they do to you, Master Smith, to so spark your anger?" The boy knew the value of flattery.

Frecern looked pleased for a moment at the title, then anger dimmed his expression again and he slammed out of the stall.

"They live." He replied to the boy gruffly. "They breath my air."

He kicked the stall door closed.

"They are disgusting."

He left the stable and Aldor continued his grooming. He wouldn't want to be around when Frecern found out the dwarf was in Edoras also. Nasty piece of work that man.

00000

"Ah, look. Edoras."

Telfaren pointed into the distance and Gleowyn stood in her stirrups to catch a glimpse of Meduseld's gold roof gleaming in the morning sun. The tumbling Snowbourn ran swiftly at her side and she felt most grateful to be nearly home.

She twisted round and called out to her father to look.

Telfaren looked at her radiant, enthusiastic expression and thought what a fool Frecern was to have thrown away the love of this good woman. He could feel himself falling further and further under her spell, but surely it was too soon to make his heart known to her, she must still be reeling from her dreadful adventure and her equally dreadful betrayal.

Telfaren looked at her fondly and thought how good it was to see her cheerful again.

 He had been most happy to be the messenger chosen to carry the news of Gimli's survival to the King's camp at Firien Wood.

Despite all the earnest qualifications Legolas had hedged the news with, emphasising how ill the dwarf still was, the fact of his survival had cheered everyone from the King to Gleowyn herself.

Even the little hobbit, Tom Gardener, who had arrived in camp the previous afternoon with some special herbs for the King, had joined in the celebration.

Telfaren patted the pouch at his side in an unconscious gesture of reassurance. He took his job very seriously and he had dispatches for both his King Elfwine, and the Lord Legolas. It seemed that, now the two Kings and the Lord of Ithilien knew him, they had requested his service.

He felt immensely flattered and rather overawed by the responsibility. Imagine if one of his messages went astray. He touched the pouch again, and forced himself to relax. All was well.

Gleowyn had noticed his fidgeting and looked on him in sympathy.

"Do you want to speed on, then Telfaren? It must be wearying for you to tarry at the column's pace."

She gestured back at the tail of men and wagons that trailed for a hundred paces or more.

Telfaren got a little tongue tied and blushed.

 "Nay, not. My lady it," He took a deep breath. "It matters not, my Lady. I will be there soon enough." He managed ungraciously.

Gleowyn glanced at him with a dimple showing in her cheek. He was very sweet really, but so shy. She looked away to the plains to give him a chance to collect himself again.

"Tell me more, Telfaren, of the battle of Helm's deep that the Lord Gimli told you of. You are so lucky to hear it from one who was there."

She turned back to the young man and was guilty of looking at him from under her eyelashes.

Not that it mattered. Telfaren was immediately fired with enthusiasm and launched into a long and detailed account of the positions held by the various forces on the curtain wall. Gleowyn looked at his animated face and thought what pretty hair he had, and eyes, she let her gaze roam a little, quite pleasing altogether really. She smiled at him again, and let him chat on as they rode home.

00000

Legolas was thankful for the thick stone walls that formed the substance of the House of Healing, he was equally grateful for the unending kindness of the healers that worked in this house.

He had never meant to cause them so much strife, and given his choice he would have smuggled his friend out of the building sometime in the night and made a clean escape. But the healers had been so adamant that Gimli should not be moved; and had become so incensed at the protesters that were now permanently stationed outside their door, restrained only by a permanent squad of royal guards, that it would have felt cowardly to simply give in and go. Nonetheless he was pleased he could not hear the chanting crowd this far back in the building.

Mobs always made him nervous.

Gimli woke and looked for his friend, finding him perched tensely in the window embrasure looking out over the house's gardens. Where he always was when he woke. Gimli could not be doing with being so ridiculously weak. Every time he woke he was horrified by how little he could do. Simply talking would wear him so greatly that he would drift off to sleep again mid-sentence. It made him feel less than Dwarvish, less than alive, if the truth were told.

He turned his head away from the Elf and looked around his room.

Nothing had changed, it remained austere and functional, always there was a small bunch of flowers on the table by the washbasin, it worried him that he knew they were Iris's; he had been here for too long.

"How long?" he ventured into the air.

"Five days, my friend." Legolas hopped down from the window and moved round the bed so he could look into his face.

"Are you sure it is not five years." Gimli asked petulantly.

"No, and you asked me that this morning."

Legolas was looking worn and strained in a way Gimli had not seen for years. Not since they thought Aragorn had been lost in the Harad campaign actually, and that was forty years ago.

Gimli reached a hand up to the Elf, who grabbed it and helped the dwarf into a more comfortable sitting position. Gimli's head swam a little but he did not faint, as he would have the day before. Progress of a sort he supposed.

"And will you tell me what has you so worried? I think I am not likely to die now, no matter how much I might wish it."

Legolas winced slightly and Gimli felt sorry to have hurt him, again.

He must have been very close for the very mention to cause his friend to recoil. It should probably have caused him more concern but frankly he didn't have the energy.

Legolas had picked up a bowl and a spoon off the tray on the table, and was advancing towards him purposefully again. Gimli rolled his eyes.

"More broth?"

"Think of it as steak, my friend. Think of it as our way out of here."

Gimli turned his head from the spoon. Then met Legolas' less than patient eye.

"You do not need to stay. Nay, I mean it. Gliver would send someone to stay with me should you only ask."

Legolas bowed his head for a moment, letting his hair shield him from Gimli's already too perceptive eye. The last thing he wanted to do was encourage more dwarves to visit Edoras in the current climate of hate. All that would happen would be that more would end up in here as patients.

"Eat." He said, re-presenting the spoon, and Gimli gave in and obeyed.

00000

It took Gleowyn a little over a day to find out what was going on in her hometown.

 No one had wanted to talk to her about her experiences, which she found a little strange, but then there were all those muffled conversations between her maids and the smiths, that cut off abruptly as she approached and started up again as she left.
Finally she bumped into an old friend from her handmaiding days who clasped her to her bosom and sobbed out how brave she was and how hard it must be to show her face when it was so shameful, and…. Gleowyn had had enough.

"What are you talking about, Lilaarn. Nothing shameful happened to me."

Lilaarn held her at arm's length and looked at her doubtfully. "Then what would you call being ravished by that animal, that dwarf."

"What!" Gleowyn's astonishment must have been convincing because Lilaarn took a step back and shook her head.

"But everyone is saying so, and the crowd outside the houses of healing calling for the dwarf to be hung and…"

"Crowd?"

"Well, Mama called it a mob really. Surely you knew?"

"The houses of healing where my Lord Gimli is attempting to recover from saving my life?"

Lilaarn placed a hand over her mouth, her eyes huge. She nodded.

"The houses of healing that my father forbids me to visit because my Lord Gimli is too ill to be disturbed."

Gleowyn's voice was rising in a manner Lilaarn remembered all too well from earlier days. She nodded again.

Gleowyn looked frantically around the square she was standing in and spotted, praise be the Valar, her friend Telfaren.

"Telfaren, come here, please."

Telfaren looked at her with a little trepidation, which simply cemented in her mind all that she had heard.

"What is the King doing about this, this, travesty, Telfaren?"

"Lord Gimli?" Telfaren ventured.

Gleowyn glared at him.

His shoulders slumped.

"He has soldiers posted outside the doors of the house of healing day and night, Gleowyn. He has posted proclamations that tell of what really happened, but most of the mob cannot read, and agitators in the alehouses inflame them. Do you really want him to set soldiers on to their grannies and mothers?"

Gleowyn could not believe her ears. With no more ado she set off for the lower streets and the Houses of Healing.

"Gleowyn wait, wait. Oh drat the girl."

Telfaren handed the astounded Lilaarn his messenger pouch and quickly checked his sword and belt knife. Then he pushed Lilaarn in the direction of the Master Smith's home.

 "Go tell him, and tell him to hurry, this could all go wrong, and quickly girl. Go!"

And with that he turned and ran after Gleowyn.

Telfaren began to panic when he realised that, where Gleowyn could slip through the thickening crowd by either smiling, or wriggling in some arcane way that let her through, as a male he had no such advantage and he was falling progressively behind.
Before he was even two thirds of the way towards the doors of the Houses of Healing, he could see Gleowyn reach the first of the guarding soldiers. She shouted something in his ear that, by his shocked expression, Telfaren assumed was her name. Gleowyn took advantage of his confusion to jump past him and onto the top step of the entranceway. The people, bored with chanting cheered her as a diversion. She started yelling something to the demonstrators nearby and a wave of quiet spread outwards as the crowd strained to hear. Finally Telfaren could hear her shouting.

"I am Gleowyn, the Master Smith's daughter."

As this information percolated through the crowd a roar went up then shut off as they strained to hear.

"I am Gleowyn, the Master Smith's daughter, and you have heard that despicable things were done to me."

The roar grew louder and Telfaren managed finally to reach the front of the crowd. Gleowyn made fleeting eye contact with him then held up her hands for quiet again.

"Look at me."

She shouted, and then pulled over the nearest soldier to stand shoulder to shoulder with her; she was half a head taller. She pantomimed amazement and showed the audience the size difference. There were a few laughs from the crowd especially when she shoved the soldier back to his post.

"Now, people of Edoras, are you stupid? I wish to hear nay here, people."

She put her hand to her ear and pantomimed listening. The crowd roared back to her good naturedly, she was the best entertainment they had had for days.

"Was that nay? I can't hear you." She worked them up a little more.

"So."

She beckoned to Telfaren to come up to her, then pushed him to his knees, looked at him critically then pushed him a little more hunched. He came up to her thigh.

"I give you the Lord Gimli."

The crowd rumbled a little. Gleowyn pantomimed the enormous height difference. Then stood with her hands on her hips looking at him and then down at herself.

"Do you think he carried a ladder?" She yelled, laughing at the crowd.

The people in front got it, and the wave of guffaws spread out into the crowd as they repeated her line to the people behind them. The laughter swelled.

Gleowyn let them laugh at her for a long moment or two and encouraged Telfaren up on his feet. He stepped in behind her protectively, although she hardly needed it.

She held up her hands again and the crowd quietened slowly.

"The Dwarf, people, did nothing to me. He was protecting me, not hurting me. The Dwarf could not have done anything to me even if he wanted to, could he?"

She stuck her hand up behind her ear again grinning at the crowd. And they, well trained now, yelled, "Nay."

"Go home, good people, and thank you for your kind thoughts. But remember the lady Eowyn. Are the Rohirrim women warriors, or the sort of milksops that would be overcome by a dwarf?

"Nay" yelled the crowd again, and again; and then laughing still, they started to disperse.

Gleowyn turned to Telfaren and buried her face in his shoulder shaking in every bone in her body.

The door to the house of healing opened when the crowd had all but gone, and Legolas slipped out to meet her. He had his bow in his hand and had obviously been covering her from one of the windows. Telfaren gave him a very grateful look, but Gleowyn was covered in embarrassment.

"My Lord, I would not have had you hear that."

Legolas bowed to her.

"My Lady, that was a very brave and very foolish thing you just did for my friend. On his behalf I thank you, and on my behalf I will ever be in your debt."

Gleowyn thought she might just die of embarrassment right there on the steps of the hospital.

"Don't ever, ever tell him I made fun of him, please, my Lord."

"Well, why don't you tell him some tale that will please you then, my Lady? He is awake and very bored. A visitor, or two"

He said looking at the messenger who looked rather white and worse the wear as well.

"Might just cheer him up."

TBC

Rose Sared

Reviews will surprise and delight me, I will even reply.

AU Fourth Age fusion of book and movie-verse. Set ninety eight years into Aragorn’s reign.

A:L:G  OC  Friendship fic. Not slash. PG for violence and some adult dilemmas in later chapters.

Angst/Adventure

Previously posted as Unbinding the Box

Adagio

Chapter Nine/End.

Minuial watched the smile blossom over the face of her lover, and drifted across the room to look over his shoulder at the scroll he had unrolled, to see what had so lightened his expression.

Legolas looked up at her, the corner of his mouth still raised in amusement, and it caught at her throat, as it had not for some time, how very beautiful he was. Even among elven-kind.

"I am invited to a wedding." He announced, with a mixture of mischief and glee in his voice.

Minuial frowned, a small crease wrinkling the perfection of her eyebrows. She could think of no couples that would be taking such a step of their acquaintance. Then she realised; some of his wretched mortal friends.

The wrinkles increased to include her nose and she turned away from him.

Never, she would never understand his fascination for those mayflies. She strode over to the balcony and let her gaze rest in the tall trees of his kingdom. If only he was not so appealing, she would stop coming back.

Legolas watched her, lazily, as she expressed her opinion in movement.

His smile if anything increased as he tried to imagine her and Aragorn in the same room, or her and Gleowyn the formidable.

"Come with me?"

Minuial spun and looked at him with astonishment.

"To a mortal wedding?" She sounded as if he had invited her to a disembowelling.

Legolas shrugged,

"As you like. But Arwen will be there, and you were only saying…" he got no further.

She stalked up to him like a hunting cat and grabbed him by the hair, tilting his head back to look into her face. That damned smile was still there in his eyes and hovering around his quite delectable mouth. He knew she could never resist a challenge.

"When?"

"Enderi. Humans like mid-summer weddings, it's traditional."

Now she knew he was having a dig at her, as if humans could understand tradition.

"And the dwarf will be there, as well?"

Legolas glanced at the hand written postscript. His smile broadened further, which only piqued her curiosity.

"Apparently he is standing up for the groom."

"On a box?"

Minuial was always quick, and Legolas pointed his finger at her admonishingly, although acknowledging the hit.

"You owe him an apology."

Minuial dropped her eyes; she was still not quite sure what had possessed her when she had needled the little creature last winter. One thing was for sure, after watching Legolas fight his way back from the wounds to his spirit that nearly losing Gimli had caused, she would not be provoking him again. She really had not understood how tenuous her Greenleaf's hold on this world was.

00000

It was traditional for the Queen to attend the weddings of her handmaids, whenever possible, and this time she pinned the invitation to Aragorn's pillow to make sure that he read it, and could not tell her, the day before they were going to leave that he had no idea she had arranged something.

Aragorn dutifully read it then turned a pleased expression on his Queen.

"This is good news."

Arwen smiled at him. "And it will give you a chance to catch up with all your old friends and find out what has been happening for the last four months."

Aragorn propped the invitation on the side table and turned again to Arwen

"Luin and Bin have finally left to re-join the tribe."

Arwen made a little moue with her mouth.

 "Oh. I will miss little Bin, he is so sweet."

Aragorn chuckled a little in remembrance.

 "Well Luin told me off roundly for letting everyone spoil him as she was recovering. She says she should call him Big Bin now as he has got so chubby on the sweets everyone feeds him."

"And how are the tribe settled in Druaden."

"Tom reports they are managing, it is very hard for them to start all over again. They have lost mana from losing their home, but they are tough. Tom sends more and more samples of herbs he has collected. At this rate he'll never get back to the Shire and I will be accused of kidnapping him."

"As long as he avoids the cave trolls."

Arwen leaned over and blew out her lamp. Aragorn did likewise.

"Some day I am going to tease Gimli about that." Aragorn said with glee.

His wife elbowed him in the ribs.

00000

Gimli son of Gloin, lay in the soft dark of his room off the great hall of Aglarond, and counted the chisel marks he could see on the ceiling.

It distracted him from thinking. Thinking that he could hear the grinding tread of the cave troll padding towards his cell.

He had put on a good show for Legolas last month, finally managing to convince his friend that he was fully recovered and thus allowing the Elf to return to the home that he would not admit he was pining for.

Gimli had tried to struggle back to health as quickly as possible as he watched Legolas become more and more stretched and worn.

By the time Legolas left Aglarond Gimli swore he could see daylight through him, so pale had he become. But although his tough dwarf body had healed itself, with only a chronic pain in his shoulder to show for his adventures, Gimli wondered if he would ever recover from the humiliation and terror he had felt as the helpless pet of the cave troll child.

He could not think of anyone he could talk to about it.

 To his peers it was inconceivable; if you were a dwarf you were either hale or dead. So rarely did illness bother them, they could not get their minds round the situation he had been in where he did not even have the means to end his own life. Where his only option had been to suffer.

Legolas loved him, and needed him but never pretended to understand him. They would die for each other in a breath, but it was not possible for him to explain to the Elf why he still felt so dead inside, as if a weeping child was curled under his breastbone unconsoled.

Aragorn might understand, but what could he change? The past was a closed book.
He would have to endure; he was so tired of feeling sorry for himself.

With a sudden movement he threw back his bed covers and, going to the fireplace, lit a taper to re-kindle his bedside lamp.

He picked up the wedding invitation from Gleowyn and Telfaren and allowed a grim amusement to cross his face.

He expected the ladder jokes to be replaced by box jokes as soon as it was known he would be standing as best man to the messenger.

They really were very sweet, these young things.

He stood with the parchment in his hands as if borrowing their strength and allowed his thoughts to get lost in the gentle flames on the hearth.

Thank you for your patience if you have got this far, the story is continued in Mayflies and Cadenza there is also a L/G slash sequence of stories based on these stories if you like that sort of thing.

Reviews would be a surprise and a pleasure.

Rose Sared