The Price of Freedom

By Erin Lasgalen

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

Prologue: Prelude at Helm’s Deep

In old age, many men look back over the arc of their lives and see all that was left undone, all that might have been better wrought, all their mistakes and short-comings.

This is no less true for women.

But in the perfect hindsight of many years, I see one key moment where the choice of all my roads to come might have led me down a different path had I not succumbed to the suffocated need for one last breath of cold spring air on the eve of the Battle of the Hornburg.

---Eowyn of Rohan

She stood on the highest tower of Helm’s Deep, beneath the lip of the great Horn, watching what would very probably be her last sunset this side of eternity. She was not yet four and twenty winters, but she felt old as the bones of the mountain below her feet. And every bit as cold and bleak.

She should have been below, organizing the women and children in the caves under the fortress, making sure they had rations and water for the coming siege. She had spent the last three hours rounding up all the village healers and midwives, and cobbling together a makeshift surgery, appointing children to gather spare rags from wherever they could for bandages.

There will be no need of the rations stored in the Deep, she thought distantly. Everything would be decided, one way or another, in the next twenty-four hours. She watched the lowest rim of the sun touch the horizon. I will watch the sun go down on this, the last night of my life, before I go down to the battlements to die in this warren hole like a cornered rabbit.

She smiled grimly, amending that last thought. Not like a cornered rabbit. She would die with a sword in her hand, defending the helpless ones below. There would be no more skulking, no more hiding. No more jumping at shadows, fearing every blind corner would reveal Grima Wormtongue. No more twisted leers, no more soul-poisoning words and oh-so-accidental brushes of hand or body as he passed. No more slinking footfalls and banked heavy breath outside the bolted door of her rooms.

Only the memory of the nightmares remained.

Very soon, she would be beyond the cold, shuddering reach of the dreams that had been much more than dreams, the horror that had breached locked doors and the sanctity of her own will.

It had begun nearly a year ago as an indistinct whisper in the back of her mind, a vague, shadowy presence that intruded into good dreams, upsetting the rhythms of her sleep. In the beginning, it has always seemed like a child’s nightmares in the light of day. She had dismissed it as bad dreams born of stress. Over the last months that presence, that faint whisper, had begun to speak to her, though she could never remember exactly what it said when she woke. The voice had grown steadily stronger through the long watches of the bitterly cold winter nights, becoming a tangible thing. By the end, she had begun to hear the breathless words in her waking hours. Each morning, she woke cold, as though icy hands had caressed her body while she slept. Each morning, she woke with nausea swirling low in the pit of her stomach, feeling as though some invisible noose were slowly tightening around her neck.

It was four days since her uncle had banished the bile-spewing monster from Edoras, since hope and salvation had arrived in the form of ‘four ragged wanderers clad in elvish gray.’ It was five days since she had lain down to an exhausted, grief-ridden sleep on the eve of Eomer’s banishment, the pain of Theodred’s death still twisting inside her like a serrated blade. It was five days since Grima had come to her one last time in her dreams.

She had told no one. What could she have said?

Uncle, I had a terrible dream. I dreamt that Grima came to me as I lay asleep and I did all that he asked of me. He lay with me, if only in the dream world. And worse, he bent my will to his with his foul sorcery so that I received him willingly. I enjoyed him, Uncle.

There were no words that she could use to speak of such shame aloud, and no one she loved that she would ever burden with the knowledge. She had not yet slept a full night without waking in a pool of sweat with a fist crammed into my mouth to stay her screams. She closed her eyes, willing thought and memory away before she began to shake like a leaf in a storm. Just a little longer to live with the memory.

She opened her eyes again after achieving some measure of numb calm and looked down upon the battlements, scanning the tiny figures for a familiar stance or gait. She found her uncle striding along the Deepening Wall of the keep, gesturing to the man beside him. Aragorn was gazing toward the muddy plains that spread out below the fortress, saying something to her uncle, his posture serious and tense.

Aragorn, son of Arathorn.

The mere sight of him seemed to banish the chill hand of sickness and terror that had been clenched around her heart like an ever-tightening vise.

He was…

He seemed to encapsulate all that was best in Men. Warrior, Lord, Captain of Men, fearless in the face of evil. But not so high and removed from lesser folk that he was unapproachable. There was a warmth, an inner light in him. It drew her and everyone who crossed his path into the unconscious spell he wove about himself. It seemed to speak to her in the heart’s wordless tongue, whispering that she too might be free and strong and brave. That she might one day feel clean again, and whole. All these things lay within her reach if she would only stretch out her hands to grasp them. It seemed like a little maid’s first sighing fancy to think she could feel so much for him after knowing him less than a week. But she did. She did. He was more than she could have conjured had she fashioned him from her own imagination. He was all she might ever hope to aspire to or emulate. If he had come to the Golden Hall even a day earlier she might have loved him as a woman loves a man.

But there was no woman’s love left in her. No sighs, no wanting, no desire. Grima had taken it all and twisted it to his will and now…

The waning sunlight on her face seemed to dim as though it were filtered through flawed, dirty glass. It matters not, she thought. Very probably, Aragorn was about to die, along with her uncle and herself and all that remained her people, hacked to bloody pieces upon the barbed, jagged swords of the White Wizard’s orcish army.

"My lady?"

She jumped like a spooked deer at the sound of that soft voice. She turned on her heel to face its owner, her eyes narrowing. There was only one narrow, spiral step that led to the Horn Tower. It had never left the corner of her eye as she stood watching the sun’s downward progress. How had he come upon her unobserved?

"How---?" She began. She stopped, returning his quizzical stare coldly, letting him make what he would of the men’s garb and armor she wore, of the bright sword on her hip. She was discovered, her plan revealed. If he chose to betray her secret there was just enough time to see her ushered back into the caverns like a disobedient child. She studied him closely.

She had spoken at length with both his companions during the day long journey from Edoras. Aragorn had commanded the greatest measure of her attention, but she had spent quite of bit of time listening at the dwarf Gimli’s tales of distant lands and strange peoples. Master Gimli had immediately assumed a posture of long-lost uncle toward her, and she had warmed to his gregarious, gruff humor, forgetting all the darkness in her heart for a short time.

The Elf, however, had remained strange and aloof, speaking little, ever alert and watchful during the long trek to Helm’s Deep. Years of Saruman’s slanderous rumors had taught the people of Rohan to fear and distrust the Firstborn, and he had seemed to sense her people’s discomfort, keeping his distance. She was positive she hadn’t exchanged so much as a word with him in the days since the arrival of Gandalf and his companions in the Golden Hall. He was gazing at her, no readable expression at all on his fair features, except perhaps mild curiosity.

"How did you know I was here?" She asked rudely, without preamble.

"I saw you from below," he said. His lips twitched minutely. "You caught my attention because you did not move like a man. Then I saw your face and I knew you." He tilted his head slightly, but in every other aspect stood still as a stone, like a man trying not to frighten a wild foal. The brief smile smoothed away to something strangely gentle. "My lady," he said in a softer voice. "You need not fear that I will betray your secret to your kin."

She released the breath she hadn’t been aware she was holding in an undignified sigh of relief. She opened her mouth to give thanks, and looked at him, really looked at him, for the first time. The first thing that struck her was that, up close, he was not merely handsome; he was beautiful. He was so fair it nearly hurt the eyes to look upon him. If he had come to Edoras eight years ago, I might have swooned at the sight of him, she thought. His face was an artless, unaffected portrait of every young girl’s ideal of boyish beauty, but there was a piercing, eldritch quality here that was…not human. Or more than human. Meeting his gaze levelly for more than a passing moment made her wonder that she could have ever mistaken the one before her for a young Man. He was neither. The too-bright eyes in that beautiful youth’s face were bottomless blue wells of memory and time. They were not mortal eyes.

"They sealed up the barricade to the caverns an hour ago," he said, jolting her out of these thoughts. "What exit did you use?"

She frowned, unsure again of his intentions. Before she could answer, his bright eyes spied the open hatch of the hidden ladder beneath the Horn’s great cradle.

"Ah! I see!" He stepped around her and thrust his head over the porthole, smiling again in that muted fashion. "Gimli has already found half a dozen such passages in the lower levels that allow movement from one section of the keep to another, all unobserved. He said he thinks there are many more, but there is no time to seek them all out." He stepped back from the shaft, turning back to face her. "Does this one open like the others, from inside only, and show no hint of its presence on the outer side?"

"Yes," she said. A thought had slowly taken shape in her mind as he spoke. "You mean to use the passages to our advantage in battle."

He nodded briefly. "We are few, so we must fight harder, but also smarter. It is really Gimli’s idea. He says it is an old Dwarvish strategy, to use one’s own architecture to run circles around an invading army."

"I know of perhaps twenty other such passageways and hidden doors!" She said quickly. "Before he died, my father spent two years refortifying this stronghold. My family would summer here while the work was going on. Eomer and I discovered at least a score of secret doors and corridors while playing here."

She stared at him, nonplussed, as he sat down abruptly on the cobbles of the Tower’s stone deck, rummaging through the small satchel bound to his waist. He motioned her to sit as well as he withdrew a small scroll of parchment and a coal pencil.

"I had this from Rivendell," he said, spreading the sheet flat between them as she sat down beside him. "I might have abandoned it long ago had not Lord Elrond in his foresight bade me keep it." He glanced up at her with a full, conspiratorial grin that reminded her of Eomer up to mischief when they were small. It did nothing to dim the unearthly sheen of his strange eyes, but it made him seem warmer, more solid. Less a creature of myth. "Will you draw a map of the hidden ways as best you can, my Lady?"

"You must call me Eowyn," she said. A slow burn of excitement was welling within her, a kindling spark of hope. Could the people of the Mark possibly survive the night? Hold the Hornburg against the onslaught that was bearing down on them?

"Eowyn then," he agreed. "If you will call me Legolas."

They sat for the better part of half an hour as she sketched out the secrets of Helm’s Deep from memory, fashioning a kind of rough diagram, until the sun was a golden sickle dying behind the distant mountains.

"By your leave," he said at last, "I must tell Gimli that I had this from you. He will fall into a fit of apoplexy if he thinks a wood elf has ferreted out more of Helm’s secret stonework than he." His shoulders shook with suppressed mirth, though he didn’t laugh aloud. "Or…perhaps I will wait a while and watch him rant and---" He broke off, tensing beside her like a horse catching the scent of gathering wolves. He sprang to his feet with weightless ease, gathering up their makeshift map. She leapt up and followed his gaze toward the darkening plain to the south. She could see nothing. She glanced over at her companion, watching in fascination as his pupils widened like a cat’s leaving only a thin sliver of blue around the rim. He must be able to see in the dark like an animal with such eyes.

"They come," he breathed.

"Can you see them?" she turned back, squinting in the dim light.

"I hear them," he said grimly. "The earth groans beneath their feet." He turned to face her. "I must go down and give this wealth of knowledge to the King and also to Aragorn." He frowned slightly. "We passed hard words between us, Aragorn and I, an hour ago. I should beg his forgiveness before we face this battle."

"I will go with you," she said, reaching for the helm she had chosen from the armory with great care. It hid her face without obstructing her vision.

"No," he said simply. "You will not." She stared at him in shock. "You must go back down to the caverns by the same path you used to leave." She watched, her face paling with anger, as he stepped quite deliberately between her and the Tower stair.

"Are Elves so quickly foresworn then?" She spat the question at him, recovering herself. "You said you would not betray me!"

"I said I would not betray you to your kin and your folk," he said calmly. "I did not say I would let you go down to fight on the front line of defense. Not this night. Not this battle."

"You cannot stop me!" She said through clenched teeth.

"I can," he said flatly. "I am stronger and faster than you, and I have many mortal lifetimes of experience as a warrior. If you force my hand I will knock you senseless and drag you down that dark ladder to safety."

She strode forward, and the sheer force of her fury must have been a tangible thing for he leaned back on his heels, startled, as she glared up at him with less than two inches between his nose and hers.

"Try!" She hissed.

He stared down into her white, enraged face, frowning intently. Nothing in his face said that he was moved by her challenge. He seemed to be trying to peer through her eyes into her thoughts. Could Elves read minds, she wondered with a chill? After a tense moment, he frowned and swore softly in his own tongue.

"Mortals can be very foolish sometimes," he said, almost to himself.

"Lady," he said, before she could utter an answer to that. "Eowyn. You do not understand the danger---"

"Oh, of course not!" She said icily. "How could I possibly have wit enough to understand that we are all in danger of being gutted or devoured alive by an army of beasts?! I may be a fool in your eyes, but I am not a coward. I am not afraid to lay down my life defending my people! I have watched all this afternoon as my uncle ordered men to press swords into the hands of eleven-year-old boys to small to even lift their weapons. There are children out there on your ‘front line of defense’ whom I watched take their first steps. I will not hide in a hole like a craven weakling when I am stronger and far more capable than they!" Her voice had risen to a low shout. Her entire body was shaking with the force of the cumulative rage she had swallowed like steady doses of poison during all the days of Wormtongue’s reign. She could feel something terrible straining at the leash of her frayed self-control. It was a black, irrational hatred and anyone or anything that would balk her after so many days and nights with only the sound of her failing uncle’s labored breathing and the pallid monster’s lies, twisted half-truths and filthy magics for company. "In times past, the women of this country have never flinched from taking up the sword to defend their families. Those who could not fight have thrown themselves upon the swords of the enemy to save their children. If you think I am foolish then you know nothing of mortal women!"

"I did not say that you are foolish," he said solemnly, no hint of answering anger in his voice. "But I am sometimes baffled by the mortal assumption that ignorance of hard---nay, terrible---truths is a form of protection against them. But you are right, Eowyn of the Mark. I know very little of mortal women. So, I shall treat with you as though you were a woman of my people. A very young, very green warrior who has yet to be tried in battle."

"Your women fight?" She blurted the question out, interrupting his next words before he could draw breath to speak. She closed her mouth abruptly, feeling suddenly young and silly under gravity of his fathoms deep silver gaze.

"Like mother bears guarding their young," he answered her softly. "All my people, without exception, learn to wield the bow and the long knife. You speak so poetically of throwing yourself upon the sword to save a child. I have seen our women do this with my own eyes. My---" He simply stopped speaking, his gaze turning inward as though he were forcibly wrenching his mind away from whatever image of memory he beheld in his mind's eye. He finally shook his head. "That is another matter entirely and not relevant here. Elvish women do not fight in the forgaurd. Ever. I will risk your kin's ire in this; there are things you and the others below need to know before this battle begins. The orcs will kill the children and the old women if all is lost. They will tear them limb from limb and devour what is left. But they will not kill you and the other women of bearing age. You are all more valuable to Saruman alive."

"As---" She swallowed hard, a cold knot of dread forming in her throat. "As slaves?"

He regarded her steadily, and his next words were a soft harmony of horror and sorrow. "As breeding stock."

She stared at him, mute, feeling the blood drain from her face as the full weight of that short statement began to sink in.

"Saruman will wish to increase the ranks of his Uruk Hai in the wake of this battle should he be victorious," he said. "He has tampered with them, using his wizard craft to create a more vicious, hardier strain of orc. But like all their kind, the Uruk Hai breed only males."

"And they need...brood mares?" She felt choked, one hand flying to stomach as a sudden realization rose up and struck her with merciless clarity like a physical blow. "The---the orc raids! All the out-lying villages that have been razed in the last few years!" Most of the bodies had been burned beyond recognition, but she remembered now, with perfect hindsight, Hama speaking in hushed tones to her brother, telling him how too many of the young women's bodies were simply missing. "Saruman was taking captives to---"

Gerta...

Gerta, Fallas' daughter, the child of one of Theodred's boyhood friends, had lived on the open grasslands of the Mark. The House of Fallas had for time out of mind shepherded the wild range cattle herds of Rohan, guarding them against wolves and orcs, carrying their tents on the backs of their horses and they moved, never laying their heads in the same place twice. In better times, her cousin had taken Eowyn and her brother to the summer gatherings of the Herd Clans on the high plains. Gerta had befriended her instantly, being supremely unimpressed by Eowyn's status as the niece of Theoden King, but nearly as enamored of fast horses and swordplay as Eowyn herself.

A year ago, Theodred had entered the Hall, his face hard and immobile, like carved stone. Eowyn's first news of her friend's death, of the massacre of all the House of Fallas, had come as she witnessed Theodred pleading at his father's feet for leave to lead a retaliatory force to track the band of orcs back to their lair.

 These shiftless cattle drivers take their lives in their hands, choosing to live on the open plains like the migratory herd beasts they tend!  Wormtongue's saccharine voice had sliced into the mute shock of her grief like salt on a jagged wound. You have said the young women were carried off? This is the work of simple bandits who are no doubt long gone!

And to this, her uncle, who was by this time no longer truly her uncle, had nodded sagely. Theodred had left the Hall, his eyes dry, his face terrible, and never again exchanged kindly words with his father. Though there had been nearly sixteen years between Gerta and the Prince of Rohan, he had loved her and would have wed her had they both lived to see that summer.

Eowyn raised her eyes to meet those of the Elf, and thought that she finally understood that place were Theodred had been, that place of stone-faced grief that was beyond tears. Still…if they had been taken alive...

"The--the most recent captives might still be at Orthanc! They might still be alive!"

"No," he said with gentle finality. "The---they---" He broke off, drawing in a deep, unsteady breath, his face as pale as her own. "I am doing this poorly! Among my people, we only speak of these horrors parent to child. And then we do not speak of them again. I am yet unwed, and so have never been charged with this unhappy task."

"You are doing well enough," she whispered. "My uncle and brother love me well, but in this matter they would have left me blind and ignorant." She set her jaw to keep it from trembling as Gerta’s face filled her thoughts once more. "Tell me everything. You said the most recent captives could not be saved. Does bearing an orc-child kill the mother or do they kill her thereafter?"

He shivered, his eyes dimming. "I took this duty upon myself, did I not?" He said after a moment’s silence. "Do not say ‘mother’. Orcs have no mothers. They have…hosts. The orcs quicken their captives with their spawn in the same fashion as all living things, but the orcling is not a child, it is a parasite. It grows within its host, devouring it from the inside for half a year before it tears its way into the world full-grown. By that time, the body of its host is nothing more than a membrane of flesh, a kind of cocoon." He had spoken quickly, almost mechanically, to force the words through his lips as quickly as possible. Now he stared into her blanched face and swallowed hard. He looked suddenly like a boy of twenty telling news of untimely death to near kin. "The one measure of comfort I can offer you is that after the first day or two of carrying the abomination within them, the victim’s spirit departs this world, though the body remains trapped in a semblance of life."

She shook her head stubbornly, clinging to a pitiful spar of hope. Oh, Gerta! "Is there no hope at all once the---the process has begun? Gandalf told me once that your people are great healers, that---"

"We have never found a cure," he said softly. "In the first age of the world, Morgoth, who was the Dark Lord’s master of old, made the first orcs from Elvish captives. Their---manner of begetting and incubation has an element of blackest magics that is designed with my people in mind as hosts. The fea, the soul, departs. The empty shell lives on as a host for the Enemy’s beast. My people…we have a sometimes blessed ability to will our own deaths. The bond between spirit and flesh shatters when we are…" He trailed off and simply stopped speaking for a moment. "We simply die," he said finally, barely above a whisper.

"How fortunate for your women," she said.

His eyes caught hers, and she saw sorrow and a sudden quiet, terrible anger flow over his fair features before it was quickly hidden. He had seen more, understood more, from that one sentence than she would have thought possible. He said nothing. He seemed to be considering his next words with great care. He sighed heavily. "Did the Men leave a cache of swords in the caves?" He asked finally.

She nodded mutely.

"In plainest truth, I lied when I said I would drag you forcibly down to the caverns, my Lady," he said. "But I beg you not to go out to the Deepening Wall with the foreguard. The fighting will become close and deadly very quickly. The Orcs will not be fooled by that binding jerkin you wear or by your armor. They will scent you for what you are, and if the madness of bloodlust has not overridden every other thought they will try to take you alive."

"They will do the same, regardless, if we are overrun," she said bluntly.

"If they push past the innermost circle of the Keep and through the barricade before the caverns," he said, "they will be in a rabid killing rage. I do not say cast off your armor, Eowyn. I ask you to stand behind the barricade, sword drawn. Find as many as you can of the young women below who can wield a weapon. Defend the children. Fight like madwomen should they break through. If you are overborne by numbers, they will kill the most dangerous among you quickly. A brave, clean death." He eyed her closely. "I think they will find you very dangerous."

A brave, clean death, the shadow in her heart sighed longingly. An end to pain and memory. She closed her eyes against the image of Gerta and her younger sister laughing in the sun, their hair swept back in the wind as the raced the two-year-old fillies across a green sea of summer grasslands. Oh, Gerta! Oh Merciful Lady, how she must have died! And Gerta’s sister, little Hannath! She had been only fourteen, but the Riders never found her body either.

She squeezed her eyes shut, stopping the tears before they began to flow.

A gentle, warm hand touched her face, and she opened her eyes to see that he was standing close enough to have kissed her. That thought alone should have made her cringe away as she had cringed at every casual touch since---since that night. But his hand on her cheek seemed to ease the pain of the jagged pieces of her fractured spirit that had been tearing at her insides.

"Eowyn," he murmured. "It is not weak to weep for those you loved."

"If I start crying now, I shall not be able to stop." She stepped back, stood a little straighter and steadied her trembling shoulders with an effort of will. "I will weep later, if there is a later."

He smiled down at her, and it seemed, though perhaps it was a trick of the eye, that all the was left of the dying light of day pooled around him in a soft halo. "The golden roses of Rohan are wrought of steel," he said. "And all the more beautiful for their strength."

There was not the faintest flicker of submerged Mannish desire that always accompanied such compliments of beauty. He was gazing at her with an open, innocent appreciation, like a man admiring a sunset or a garden in bloom. And she somehow sensed that the greatest measure of the beauty he beheld in her was within. For an instant, she saw herself mirrored in the mithril-hued depths of his eyes, strong and valiant, pure and untarnished by bruising clammy hands and violation of the mind. For that look alone, she might have loved this man who was not a Man, this figment of legend and moonlight, more truly than Aragorn had she not been ruined for all such things.

But ruined she was.

She saw now with sudden stark clarity that she would not be able to return Aragorn’s love, even if he offered up his heart with both hands. In truth, she might have shied away had he shown any interest at all beyond that of brotherly friendship. She loved him, she suddenly realized. She loved him as a soldier loves a great king. She would follow him to the ends of Middle Earth if he would allow it. But she did not want him. That door was closed now, and perhaps it would always remain shut. She wanted…

She wanted to be like him. Brave, strong and pure. And free. If she lived beyond this night, she could think of no better fate than to give her life in the service of Isildur’s Heir. The thought of such an end gave her more joy than anything had in a very long time, and she smiled like bright, cold sunshine in the depths of winter.

Legolas was no longer smiling. Perhaps he had some measure of inherent Elvish magic, or perhaps the run of her thoughts had played out openly on her face, but he was staring at her in sorrow and alarm as though she had spoken her mind aloud. "Eowyn," he said softly, sadly. "Do not fade."

"Fade?" She frowned in confusion.

"Do not seek your own death. On the other side of this great shadow there is hope and healing of all your hurts. I swear it!"

"Perhaps." And she cursed herself when her voice broke. It made her sound like a little girl on the point of tears. "But I cannot see if from where I stand!"

He smiled down at her, and now, she saw that the soft radiance that shone about him in the deepening gloom was no illusion. He was glowing. "Then trust me. I am an Elf. My sight is much better than yours." He took both her hands in his and held them so that her palms faced upward between them. "I shall tell you something my father told me long ago, in the darkest hour of my life. He held my hands thus, and said, ‘The strength to heal all your wounds, to banish darkness, to change the world if need be---it is all right here.’"

She turned her gaze upward, from her open hands clasped in his to his timeless, silvery eyes. She inhaled slowly, feeling a tremor run through her body as the words took hold inside her mind and heart. Something had shifted, changed within her in a profound way she did not yet understand. It was as though the future had altered even while it still remained unwritten.

"I will trust you," she said steadily. "You have told me more of the truth than those I have loved and trusted my entire life. For that, though not for that alone, I will call you friend if you do not think me too bold."

"I think," he said gravely, "it would be a great tragedy if you were ever anything less than bold, Eowyn Elvellon."

"Elvellon?" She repeated.

"Elvellon," he said again. His smile was like the sun on budding leaves in spring, warm and full of hope, like a child’s smile. "It means ‘Elf friend.’"

And in spite of the doom bearing down on them in the form of ten thousand ravening beasts, in spite of everything, she somehow found it in her heart to smile, too.

They broke through the barrier just before the crack of dawn. The first dozen or so did not get far. The initial fissure they tore in the weight of stone and new mortar Gimli Gloin’s son had used the seal the main entrance to the caverns only allowed for one body to squeeze through at a time. The girls from the lowlands east of Westfold shot them with their light bows, taking turns, laughing aloud. It was a shrill, childlike noise that was a mixture of excitement and near-hysterical terror. It echoed through the sepulchrous caverns around them like the chiming of tinny bells.

Their laughter did not last long. Other creatures came, too big to be of pure orcish stock, too small to be trolls, shoving themselves against the gap, smashing the jagged edges wider. Only much later did Eowyn realize that she would not have survived the first five minutes of true fighting had the giant, nameless thing that was neither orc nor troll not fallen half in and half out of the fissure in the barricade, its body riddled by a dozen arrows. Then the others clambered over the great thing’s carcass and battle was joined.

The first of their enemies came harrowing toward her, hewing at her clumsily like a butcher’s apprentice.

The world went cold and silent. All movement about her seemed to slow, and her senses sharpened to crystalline clarity. She sidestepped the flailing swing and gutted him with one smooth stroke of her blade, spinning forward again to meet the next attacker. All about her, she could hear the shrieks of women and girls as they took down his fellows with bows, swords, hammers, hoes and wicked-looking kitchen cutlery. Frerya of Storhald let out a scream of pure rage as she clove the head of the orc before her in two halves. Like Eowyn, Frerya was a noblewoman, a distant cousin to the House of Eorl. She had been trained to wield a sword as was traditional for all highborn women of Rohan. Many women---most, in fact---learned the ceremonial sword dances and fighting forms out of obligation to old custom, learning little that was actually useful. Frerya, it seemed, had learned much.

All these things passed in the space of a dozen heartbeats. She was aware of them peripherally, but as she pushed her sword through the neck of her second orc it all ceased to matter. A cold, merciless rage that was almost a living thing took hold of her.

The comfortless grief of the last two years, all her helpless fury as Theoden had failed, as Wormtoungue rose to power astride his prone body, as reason and right were slowly turned on their heads in the Golden Hall, the light dying in Theodred’s eyes as he breathed his last breath in her arms, the feel of Grima’s phantom body moving upon hers, the memory of how she had screamed with pleasure in the thrall of the dream-spell and begged him each time to take her again, the memory, clear as an artist’s painting, of Gerta smiling, riding beside her at full tilt as they shrieked with girlish laughter under the golden sun---

It all distilled together and tore through her like a lightning strike, searing through her body and into the blade in her hands. It burned away everything within her that felt crushed and caged and dirty. Her sword was moving with the speed of thought, cleaving through the beasts like a hot knife through butter. She moved through them like a machine wrought for killing, and the joyous, euphoric bloodsong of battle took hold of her, thrumming through her veins. How long she fought she could not say. She lost time and all perception of anything except weightless elation as she slew her demons, as she took back her power, her safety, her pride, her freedom, from their clawed hands. Later, she vaguely remembered that she had gone tearing out of the caverns in a red haze of blazing adrenaline when she realized their were no more monsters left to slay, desperate to keep hold of the feeling that she sensed would fade when sanity reasserted itself.

She did not recognize the grizzled, bearded face behind the axe that spiraled into her field of vision as she burst into the Keep Hall, knocking her sword from her white-knuckled, bloody fingers. He whirled the axe around and swept her feet out from under her with its handle. When she would have scrambled mindlessly around him to grasp her sword again, he gripped her by the shoulders and shook her until her teeth rattled.

"It’s over, Lass!" He finally bellowed into her face.

She blinked at him. She had thought he was kneeling before her at first. He was not. He only needed to bend at the waist a bit to look down into her dazed face. He saw recognition flood into her eyes and punctuated his words with a hard, comforting squeeze of her shoulders. "Ease down, Lass," said Gimli Gloin’s son. "Deep breaths! And don’t try to stand yet. You’re going to be dizzy when you start to come down from that high wind you’ve been riding." He grinned, a flash of white teeth through the forest thicket of his beard. "You looked like my dear old Mam just now, when the berserker rage took her during the orc invasions of the Iron Hills when I was a lad. Sweet Aule, she could swing an axe!" He chuckled merrily, and the warm rusty sound seemed to bring her more to herself. It made the cold stone floor beneath her and the smoky air around them more real, less dreamlike. "If you had anything remotely resembling a proper beard," Gimli was saying, "I might be asking your uncle for your hand!"

A shaft of morning sunlight slanting through the cracks of the high, arched stone ceiling, struck her face. It was warm and bright, like the promise of spring after a bitter winter. She began laughing softly, taking his grimy hand in hers. One did not have to be a Man to be a dear man, she thought fondly. It only occurred to her much later that day that here was another whose touch did not draw a shiver from her.

"It you were any kind of horseman at all, Master Gimli," she said with a smile, "I would accept." The sound of steel on steel, a distant song of victory, echoed inward through the blood-smeared stones of Helm’s Hall where they sat together, laughing in the midst of the carnage around them. She felt warm. She felt well for the first time in a very long time.

"Have we won?" She asked needlessly.

"Nearly," Gimli said. "Your brother arrived in the nick of time with Gandalf, Erkenbrand and several thousand of your countrymen. It was a dramatic bit of timing."

She could no longer feel the icy hand that had encircled her heart and mind like a vise. For the moment, she could even believe that she was free of it, that she had hewn her way through an army of all her horrors made flesh and slain them all. Nienna the Merciful, her tired mind sighed. Let it be so!

You are mine, my sweet, cold blossom. You will never be free of me!

She sat up with a choked scream, flailing off the straw cot where she had collapsed in boneless exhaustion after a day of gathering and tending the wounded. It was pitch black, still an hour before dawn. She sucked in a huge draught of air, fighting blind panic, pressing both hands to the side of her head as though she could squeeze out the feel of Grima’s presence slithering through her mind. It was like a chill hand running greedily over her naked skin.

Two days before she would have folded into herself in nausea and terror, curling her knees to her chest on the hard floor, one hand clamped over her mouth to stop her sobs. Now, in the wake of her first true battle, she was altered profoundly. There would be no more hiding. Never again. One hand clenched around the sword she had taken to bed with her like a talisman against bad dreams. She shot to her feet and ran from the darkened Hall where she and village midwives had set up a surgery with the help of Aragorn. She ran through the Keep at a breakneck pace, tearing past the watch fires and the surprised faces of the guards posted along the broken remains of the Deepening Wall, down the rubble-strewn stair to the lower courtyard where her brother’s Riders had quartered many of their mounts.

She found one horse mysteriously saddled and tore the reigns from the long hitching post.

Hasufel.

Theodred’s horse. She took the proud beast’s head in her hands, her eyes burning. "Will you bear me to Orthanc, old friend?"

"No, he will not!" A deep, melodious baritone said firmly.

She did not start in surprise. She only closed her eyes, leaning forward against Hasufel’s broad nose, sighing like a condemned prisoner gazing through the futureless window of a hangman’s noose.

"Let me go, Gandalf," she said. Gods, she was so tired.

His took her shoulder and turned her gently to face him. "Not for all the wealth in Middle Earth, child. You are being influenced, and would know why I forbid you if you were in your right mind. Grima is manipulating you to bring you to Orthanc. Wormtongue you could easily slay, I think, but he is only the cub in that bear’s den. Saruman would make very short work of you." The old, yet un-aged cornflower blue eyes that had always born the twinkling promise of wondrous stories and Midsummer’s Eve fireworks when she was small were full of worry. He lay one finger on her temple and a warm wash of peace flowed through her soul.

"Ah," he said softly. "I see." She shivered; there was enough power and quiet wrath in that sandpaper growl to shatter mountains with a word.

Snick.

It was almost audible. She felt the invisible choke-wire that had been strangling the life out of her for months, wilting every good thought with its loathsome touch, snap. It was as though the wizard had taken sheers to a taut rope.

It was gone.He was gone. Just like that she was free of him. One hand went to her trembling lips, hovering there like a terrified bird. Her knees began to sag, her vision blurring. There was a storm brewing inside her that she sensed would tear her asunder if she did not release it. She had buried her tears for too long, piling grief upon grief in a storeroom of loss and pain that was near to overflowing. Someone guided her to sit on one of the hard benches against the courtyard wall. A water skin was set between her shaking fingers and rough-skinned, gentle hands pressed around hers, steadying her grip, helping her raise it to her lips as though she were a child.

"There there, Lass! Drink up, now."

She ruthlessly forced the sobs down, back into their cell of silence. She could not cry. She could not!

"…could see that there was some shadow poisoning her spirit." Legolas’ voice was soft, like distant music.

"I am a fool!" Gandalf said bitterly, his voice pitched soft as well. "I was so pleased with myself at having exorcised Saruman from Theoden that I didn’t stop to consider that his foul student might have tampered with the mind and will of more than one member of the House of Eorl."

"Do not---do not tell…" She could not speak yet. If she opened her mouth again she was afraid she would begin to wail uncontrollably from sheer relief. She concentrated on breathing in and out, on steadying her hands. Anything else was beyond her for the moment. The world tilted to one side and someone lifted her in both arms like a child. Another light touch on her forehead and dreamy peace flooded through her again.

The next sound she made sense of was Gimli’s voice, speaking in a hushed whisper. She was lying in a cot in one of the small antechambers to the Keep Hall. "She’s a strong lass!" His rough hand clapped over hers, tightening reassuringly. "She’ll be right as rain now that you’ve purged her mind of that slinking worm’s whispering."

"There was more harm done here than you imagine, Gimli," Gandalf rumbled softly.

"Are you sure it was wise to calm her, Mithrandir?" Legolas said. "I sensed some of what she has suffered and guessed more. This kind of pain must have an outlet or she will shatter from the stress of containing it."

"Do not tell my uncle!" She sat up, shaking her head to clear it, startling them all.

"Eowyn," Gandalf said gently. "Theoden should know---"

"No!" she said harshly. She gripped the Dwarf’s hand firmly, bringing the world back into sharp focus with a monumental act of will. His hand in hers was like the feel of rich earth over strong solid stone, a brace of strength to lean the weight of mountains upon. "Would you break his heart as well as Eomer’s?!"

No one answered her. She straightened her back. She took a long, deep breath of cold morning air and met the troubled gazes of the three before her with a chill composure that only served to deepen the shadows of worry in their kind faces. She said a brief, silent prayer of thanks to all that was holy that Aragorn was not here with them. "There is no time to weep for the loved ones we have lost or the pain we have suffered," she said in a clear, cold voice. "If we win and live to see the end of this war, we may nurse our wounds at our convenience. If we lose, it will not matter. But until either one future or the other unfolds we must each bear our burdens as best we can and not falter. Gandalf, you know my uncle must ready the Mark for war. If the call to arms does not come from Gondor today, it will surely come within a fortnight. I heard you tell Theoden that all of Mordor is mobilizing. Do not distract him or divide his focus with a tale that will serve no other purpose than to cause him grief!"

There was a silence.

"Mayhap," the wizard said gravely after a long moment. He leveled a piercing, grave stare at her, though her. She had the unnerving impression that he was reading deeper secrets in the depths of her eyes than she could plum in the silence of her own mind. "Mayhap there is wisdom in your words, my dear child. Though you will pay a price for your silence you do not yet realize. But I foresee that these woes you deem of no importance in the grand scheme of things will be the touchstone of great deeds in the days to come."

So, the matter was settled for the time being.

Later that morning, Theoden and Gandalf led a force of men to Orthanc to route Saruman out of his den. Her uncle left her with the duty of caring for the women and children of Westfold, effectively trapping her at the Hornburg while he and the other went to Orthanc to see to the White Wizard. And to Grima Wormtongue.

She turned her mind ruthlessly away from those thoughts and set it to the task at hand. She moved through the long days that followed, settling the refugees of Westfold and Edoras into what would very likely be a prolonged stay within the safety of the Hornburg, organizing living arrangements for the steady stream of those who continued to flock to the great stone refuge over the next few days. Many of them arrived with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. Food and water would not be an issue. The caves of the Deep were stocked with enough rations for a year-long siege if need be. The logistics of sleeping arrangements for the ever-growing throng, of clean water for cooking and bathing, of coal and firewood, kept her moving and thinking and occasionally wishing to tear out her own hair in frustration.

All the while, as she pulled apart the tangled knot of disorganization and chaos about her, her eyes turned ever southward, seeking the return of her uncle. And of Aragorn.

She soon discovered that Gandalf had spoken the truth when he had told her there would be a heavy cost for her silence. The price of dry eyes and a cool clear head in the wake of the horrors of the last year fell upon her like encroaching winter after a taunting warm day in autumn. It congealed her blood. It froze her heart. It numbed every emotion one by one until she could feel nothing. Nothing at all. Outwardly, she knew she seemed crisp and efficient, a clear-headed, brave daughter of Eorl guiding her people in their Lord’s absence.

Inwardly, she was dying by inches, her frost-bitten soul supping daily on the poison she could not release. Not yet. Not until her uncle stood victorious against the Enemy or lay cold and still beyond the reach of all grief. The release from Wormtongue’s spell had given her no solace, no safety from memory, no rest. She was afraid to sleep. In the chill stillness of the nights she sat alone, ever wakeful, numb from cold without and within.

On the fourth day of her watch, he came again. Her captain, her lord, her savior. She ran out to meet them, a fragile, wintry joy flooding her ailing heart. She would go to war with Aragorn. She would ride at his side and fine peace and honor and blessed, blessed sleep in some glorious death upon the plains of Gondor!

The following morning, she stumbled dazed and hollow-eyed back to the grim, gray shelter of the Keep. Aragorn had departed. They had all gone galloping off bravely to a horrific death, leaving her behind to mind the old women and children. Even knowing the madness of Aragorn’s scheme and the unnamable fate that awaited them along the Paths of the Dead, she would have followed fearlessly. She had implored him to allow her this noble death. In the end she had begged him on her knees like a slave. He had refused her out of care for her safety and out of respect for her kin. She was, after all, in the charge of her uncle and brother. It was the right of the men in her life to direct her fate, she thought bitterly. Her uncle and brother, who had protected her from harm so wonderfully up to this day!

She stopped that thought in its tracks, a wave of terrible shame clawing at her. Her strong, loving uncle had not been able to defend himself, let along her, from Wormtongue’s magics. And dear Eomer had been banished for his pains when he had tried.

She stopped at the entrance to Helm’s Hall, turning back to watch the tiny figures of riding away. Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli were gone to walk the haunts of the dwimmerlaik of Erech; they were as good as dead. Her uncle was mustering the Riders of Rohan for war. Gondor would soon send the call to arms.

The fields of Gondor…

A tiny smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. She would ride with them to glory. She would find a way.

I found my way. I found my glory, though it has come at a cost I would willing give my life to unpay.

Theoden lies dead, shrouded in the royal sepulchres of Minas Tirith temporarily, born there by my countrymen with a reverence just short of worship. He saved Gondor at the cost of his own life. He died like a king out of legends.

It would have been so much simpler if I had died with him.

The healers and servants in these Houses of Healing whisper as I pass, their voices hushed with awe. They hail me as the heroine who slew the Witchking of Angmar in single combat, the fearless shield maiden of the North. They do not know what I fraud I am. They do not know that my greatest wish in riding to Gondor was not to save them; it was to die heroically. All my desires in coming here were selfish and ignoble. My head-long rushed toward my own destruction blinded me to all else until I saw my uncle crushed beneath Snowmane’s great body, the Nazgul leering over him.

If I had been quicker, less self-absorbed, more intent upon my King’s safety, I might have been quick enough to save him. I know I would have been. Every man on the field was stronger than me, but none of them were as fast. I swing a sword with the speed of lightning striking from sky to earth. Theoden told me this with a great measure of pride once. I could have saved him, but I did not. I was caught up in the sheer joy of sky and wind and the strong horse stretching out beneath me as we rode forward. As it was at Helm’s Deep, all the shadow and dark memory fell away as I swung my sword. I was strong and I was free, and I sang with the other Riders as we slew out enemies and drove them before us. Then Angmar came upon us and the host of Riders scattered. Snowmane reared, falling with Theoden trapped beneath him. They call me fearless. They do not understand that the tangible wave of terror the Ring Wraith emitted like a poisonous fume had no effect on me. There is precious little fear in a warrior who is already suicidal.

The Great Shadow has passed. On that fateful evening before the Battle of Helm’s Deep, my fairest friend promised me there was hope and healing beyond this struggle, but still I have not found it. My brother has sent word from the Field of Cormallen begging my to join him if my wounds are healed enough for the journey.

A decision lies before me, two roads I might now walk.

The Steward of Gondor joins me on my daily walks through the gardens and courtyards of the Healing Houses. He believes he loves me, but he is wrong. He is infatuated, fascinated---and what he feels for me is more than kissing cousin to what I felt for Aragorn. He wants to be like me, or so he thinks.

He sees me as I want to be in truth, strong and pure and beautiful. He would come to love me with all his heart in time, I think. He is all any woman could hope for in a man. He is wise and kind and strong. I could live with him and be his love, his White Lady in the green forests of Ithilien. I could keep his house, bear his children and love him all the days of my life. I see that I might come to love him with all my heart as well. I am teetering on the threshold of loving him even now. One more day, or two, and I shall be his. I could say yes to the question he will soon ask. I could be his. And never mine. Never in all my life mine and no one else’s.

It is not enough.

It would be very simple to let his love wash away the stain of Grima’s spell, the memory of his dream hands on my body. But I cannot take healing of the wounds Wormtongue dealt me by loving another man. Aragorn taught me that. If he had returned what I felt for him, what I thought I felt for him, I would have shied away. In his wisdom, our new king gave me the thing I needed most from him. He gave me his hand in friendship and told me without words that the strength and will to change my own destiny lay in myself, not in him. Legolas said me the same thing when he took my hands in his and told me the power to heal all my hurts lay there, not in the hands of another. I was too blind to see it then.

No longer.

All the hurts of my body are healed. The Master of the Healers tells me he will release me into my brother’s keeping with joy when he finally returns.

Into my brother’s custody. Not my own. Even in this new age that is dawning as I write these words, I will always be in the keeping of someone else. Uncle, brother, loving husband. Never my own.

I have known the wind in my hair and the sun on my face as I raced forward into battle, bright sword held aloft in strong hands. I cannot go back to a cage, however gilded, however loving the master. And I see now that the wounds of spirit I still carry within me will not be healed by calling any man, however loving and good, my lord. Only on the fields of Pellennor, only at the breach of the barrier wall in Helm’s Deep, when I stood sword in hand, alone but strong in myself, was I free and whole.

I no longer wish for death. I think I am healing of the worst of my wounds.

I will find a way to heal myself completely, but the path to healing does not lie in Gondor or even Rohan. I will leave this beautiful, white towered city tonight. I will leave its handsome, kind-eyed Steward.

I will find my own road.

---Eowyn of Rohan

The Price of Freedom

By Erin Lasgalen

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

 Chapter 1: The Widows of Rhunballa

The deafening explosion and the shower of multi-colored sparks, sand and rock that plumed upward in the shape of a giant mushroom could very probably be seen for leagues.

So much for secrecy, Eowyn thought irritably. Though, in a way, they would be in better straights when the privy, so to speak, finally hit the windmill. She had no talent for dissembling. Perhaps that was why every nightly session of Queen’s Council left her with a pounding headache afterward. And more, all these clandestine excursions to the high desert were taking time away from the more immediate concerns on her plate.

Fallah Nor’s-daughter cut her great almond-shaped black eyes at Eowyn and smiled slyly. "You are thinking Indassa will be displeased."

"That is a great understatement," Eowyn said blandly.

The other woman’s teeth flashed white against her ebony skin. "Not if we offer it to her as a full proof method of ridding herself of an unwanted husband." Fallah pushed her spectacles up off the bridge of her sweating nose. It was a very bookish gesture for someone holding a smoking fireworks launch tube as thick as her own torso balanced on one shoulder.

Eowyn frowned at that thought and the sudden gory mental image of what this new device could do to a score of armed men. "The new design is an improvement," she said, gazing at the burning crater thirty yards away from the little hillock where they stood. "It did not knock you backward though the air when you fired it this time."

Her friend laughed. "The parallel tube gives more thrust to the rocket, but we still need more distance." Fallah lay the spent fireworks tube down and began scribbling madly into her book of designs. Eowyn peered over her shoulder, staring down at the incomprehensible mathematical squiggles.

"There is an equation," Fallah told her, "that my forefathers in the far south used to wield their catapults with deadly accuracy when the sons of Harad attacked our northern borders. It factors force and angle of launch and the weight of the object in question to order where a projectile will fall within a few dozen spans. Our engineers of old knew exactly how many grains of burning powder to add to the catapult and how many degrees of---"

She caught Eowyn’s politely blank expression and grinned sheepishly. "It is like an archer with a bow. When we learn how to angle and draw the ‘bow string’ for the proper amount of force---"

"---We shall become marksmen," Eowyn finished. "That much I understand." She managed to keep a straight face for half a minute more before laughter bubbled out of her and infected the other woman as well.

Fallah stood, gathering the reigns of her spooked, trembling horse, shading her eyes toward the west. "It grows late," she said pointedly.

It was three hours ride back to the city. It did not do to be caught out after nightfall this close to the mountains.

"It would be best if we hide our plans in plain sight by offering this up to Indassa as a weapon against Haradoun," Fallah said as they set out at a hard clip. "She will be much more than simply displeased if she learns the truth of what we have been about out here among the saw grass and scorpions." She glanced over at the stubborn set of Eowyn’s jaw and added quietly. "So will a great many others. They will say it is biting the hand that feeds us."

"As opposed to biting the hand that feeds upon us?" Eowyn asked bluntly.

Her companion shook her head mildly. "Ah, my friend, you are such a Westron! All or nothing. Black and white. Absolute rights and absolute wrongs. In the lands where the Dark God held sway we have never had such luxuries of idealism---not even here in Rhunballa. We made the deals with the devils at hand that were necessary to keep breathing and, from that, we salvaged what little love and freedom we could."

Eowyn shifted in her saddle, feeling the all too familiar surge of frustrated anger whenever she was forced to beat her head against the pragmatic logic of Eastern rationalization. "I know this," she said. "But a new age of the world has dawned, Fallah! Men---or women---no longer have to make deals with devils to survive!"

"No?" Fallah eyed her like a long-suffering schoolmistress fretting over a slow pupil. "The Dark God is dead. Old Emperor Farosh of Harad is dead. But the young Emperor Haradoun is strong and cunning and, I assure you, thrice the villain his father was. It was, as you know, he who led the great band of warriors through the Eastern Pass four years ago to conscript the men of Rhunballa for the Dark God’s great war. It was he who slew our good King Udam and took the Princess Indassa to wife."

"’Taking to wife’ is not the word my people use for what he did to her," Eowyn whispered harshly.

"As you say," Fallah agreed, unperturbed. "He won great praise for having accomplished what no servant of Mordor had managed in ten centuries---the sack of the Defiant City." She shrugged. "His chieftains must have forgotten that the brave Prince of Harad had a Nazgul riding at his side to discourage the attentions of our friends in the mountains for they give him all the credit."

Eowyn drew reign and stared at her in open anger. "Our ‘friends’ ate that family at that farmstead in South Springs, Fallah!"

"But who were they?" Fallah murmured with cool indifference. "No one of name. A young tinker from Eastern Sabad and his wife and children who achieved safe passage through the Eastern Divide with a merchant caravan two years ago. Newcomers with no roots in Rhunballa, no family to mourn them. If someone must appease our protectors’ hunger on occasion, who better than they?"

Eowyn stopped the angry words poised at her lips when she saw the sad, slightly bitter smile on her friend’s face. "That is how we have lived free of Sauron’s yoke for a thousand years, my friend," Fallah said quietly. "That is how the majority of our people still think." She swept one arm upward and around her head, gesturing vaguely at the distant cloud-shrouded peaks of the harsh, reddish mountain range surrounding them. "Rhunballa, the Defiant City, stands today because of what haunts the mountains that ring this great valley. We have lived in a kind of symbiosis with the Nighthunters since time out of mind. Rhunballa lay within the realm of the Dark God, yet not of it. We refused Him worship and our tithe of young men and women. We refused Him any allegiance at all. And as this tiny kingdom of defectors and escaped slaves grew and prospered, we began to draw brave would-be conquerors like flies to honey. Every few years some Easterling Chieftain or Princelet or Khand or Harad would lead a valiant crusade through the Eastern Divide."

"And so, by your very existence, you reeled in a steady supply of victims for the---the Hunters," Eowyn finished. She had little sympathy for would-be Haradrim conquerors, but Fallah had failed to mention that the legend of the Defiant City, the hope of freedom and a better life, drew many, many simple folk from the East, Harad and the lands of the far south. These people came to the Passes of the Dhak-Ral Mountains willing to brave almost any danger to escape the whip hand of Mordor. Most of them did not make it to Rhunballa.

"Aye, we are worms dangling on the hook." Fallah gave her an almost pitying look. "You say a new day has dawned? Perhaps it has for the sons of Numenor and your yellow-haired Northmen. But Haradoun has taken Rhunballa once. He will come again. He must. He has laid waste to Khand and South Harad these last two years and made himself undisputed lord of all the East. His pride will not bear it if he fails to retake his defiant bride and her lands. And who will protect us, Eowyn? King Elessar?" She spat upon the ground. "He led the charge from his black Umbari ships to the fields of Pellenor, and rode down the sons of Rhunballa like wheat."

"If you believe all this," Eowyn asked softly, "why are you helping me?"

Fallah’s hands were gripping her reigns so tightly her knuckles were a bloodless gray. No other reaction showed in her face or voice as she spoke in her customary matter-of-fact manner. "Because Haradoun took every male in Rhunballa over the age of nine---eight thousand men and boys. Less than two score returned to tell the tale. My father was fifty-seven and nearly lame with rheumatism, an aging apothecary who never raised a hand in violence in all his life save to swat the backside of his only child when she misbehaved. He died beneath the hooves of Elessar’s cavalry because he could not run. But he should never have been there at all! And I think---no, I am sure---that the Hunters let Haradoun through the Divide."

Eowyn stared at her. Fallah’s head turned back toward the rust-colored mountains fearfully. Her pretty, slightly bookish face looked suddenly much younger than her twenty-two years. She looked like a little girl who fears she has been overheard speaking dreadful secrets aloud. "I have not heard that," Eowyn said slowly.

Fallah’s voice was almost a whisper. "Enshin the carpenter’s son on Bright Street told me something four months ago before he died of the wasting sickness he has fought these last two years. He said as the pressgang drove the men of Rhunballa beneath the Dhak-dir Crags, Haradoun halted the column for an hour’s rest. Enshin swore to me he saw Haradoun climb up into the Crags and vanish into the caverns there."

"To give thanks for safe passage?" Eowyn asked in a low voice.

"I think so," Fallah nodded. Her mouth set in a hard line. "You ask why I am helping you with this mad scheme when I know that Indassa would most likely behead the both of us with her father’s scimitar while all of Rhunballa cheered her on if she knew our true intent. I think it was not the Nazgul that deterred the Hunters. I think Haradoun struck some kind of bargain with them. And if they let him in once to ravage our city of its men, they may let him in a second time to enslave the women of Rhunballa."

Eowyn was silent, thinking how Indassa had blithely waved away her apprehensions about leaving the bulk of Rhunballa’s defense against human monsters in the hands of actual monsters. "Four years ago," Indassa had told her airily, "it seemed that the Dark God was only inches from completing his conquest of all the world. The Hunters feared His might and betrayed us to save themselves. Who would not do the same?"

Eowyn had wisely refrained from replying to that rhetoric question.

"My incendiary potions and fireworks will set the Hunters ablaze---" Fallah’s lips quirked. "In truth, they will blow them to bits. But it will do the same to a battalion of Haradrim warriors if need be. If we must tell anyone anything, we should say that we are working on a gift for the Queen. A method of defense that will rend Haradoun into a hundred small messy pieces should he be so foolish as to return to claim his bride."

"Agreed," Eowyn nodded. Indassa would definitely warm to that thought. "But let us say that and nothing more unless we are asked outright."

They rode on in companionable silence for a space of time. The earth beneath them changed slowly, the dry sawgrass and desert scrub giving way to a gentler grassland of low rolling hills. Eowyn never ceased to find it amazing how one could literally smell water in the air as they drew nearer the valley’s center. It was especially strong after a long afternoon in the Dustlands. Eowyn caught herself frowning with tension and smoothed her face out deliberately. She had a vague memory of her mother telling that she would develop and ugly wrinkle directly between her eyes if she did not learn to forbear from frowning so furiously. She would have to learn not display every thought and strong feeling so openly on her face, slow student though she was in this art. It ground against every sense of rightness she possessed to go behind Indassa’s back in this fashion, but---

But the foolish little Queen had given Eowyn the Captaincy of Rhunballa’s Watch, the only form of military the valley kingdom possessed. And now, Eowyn found herself charged with the defense of Rhunballa’s Queen and its people, and simultaneously hamstrung from protecting the small kingdom’s people by the command to let monsters walk among them unmolested.

Eight weeks ago, she had sworn an oath as she stood in the little kitchen of that empty farmhouse in South Springs, one hand clenched in impotent rage, the other holding a straw-stuffed doll stained on one side with the dried blood of the child who had loved it. The family’s nearest neighbors had heard what might have been screams the night before and seen no one leave the house all day. No one had followed Eowyn into the house. Not Suni or brave Shaeri. Not even Ikako. They had turned their faces away, unwilling to even look at the house unless forced. They did not want to look or know. They did not want to see the simple toys strewn around the floor, or the half-knitted woolen coat the mother had been laboring over, or anything that might make them see this murdered family as people no different from their own loved ones. The Hunters always made it easier for the Rhunballani to look the other way, taking new-comers, removing the bodies so there was nothing more gruesome to clean up in their wake than an empty cottage like this one. Only the empty house and one blood-splattered toy told the tale of what had happened here the night before. "She must have been holding you when they killed her, Dolly," Eowyn had whispered, rage rising inside her like a sand storm in the high desert, ready to strip the skin off of anything or anyone foolish enough to block her path.

She would end this, she had sworn. Somehow she would find a way to destroy the Hunters, who drank up the life’s blood of the few and dirtied good hearts of the many by forcing them into frightened complicity. Somehow she would find a way to accomplish this that did not leave Rhunballa open to conquest. Fallah’s weapons were a two-fold answer to both prayers, but the mere thought of using these devices on human beings was abhorrent.

"It would be a terrible thing to have to use these weapons against Men," she said aloud.

"It will be far more terrible if Haradoun returns without a Nazgul nipping at his heels," Fallah replied. "It is the only reason he did not sack the city."

They crested a hill and the sparse grassland and sage blended with deepest water-fed green for a hundred yards before disappearing completely. A gushing wellspring, one of hundreds that dotted the inner valley region, spouted upward in an arching font, curling downward to form the mouth of a small creek. Rolling out before them lay the heart of Rhunballa, the Hundred Springs Vale. In every square mile there lay one or two such streams, the life’s blood of Rhunballa, flooding green life to rice fields, orchards, wheat crops and live stock. At the center of this sprawling oasis that was more than twenty leagues from end to end stood Rhunballa City, the Defiant Jewel, wreathed in multi-hued flowers and water fronds, crowned with willows and fruit laden trees. Across the green plain of rice paddies and blooming vegetable fields, the city of wood, adobe and clay tile sat perched upon a great, gently sloping ridge.

Rhunballa City had no walls.

Eowyn felt a swell of terrible dread as she remembered Fallah’s tale of how Haradoun and his men had simply ridden up to King Udam’s villa four and a half years ago and strode into his dining room unmolested. The Prince of Harad had slain the old man at own his breakfast table. Two hundred Haradrim warriors had taken this peaceful, sun-washed city in an hour. Now, four years later, the city remained unfortified and the fields of Hundred Spring were tended solely by women. Haradoun had spent only half a day in Rhunballa. He had stayed only long enough to slay the King, ravish the Princess, and round up every male old enough to hold a sword without falling over. Time had been of the essence and the Nazgul would brook no delay for unproductive sacking and pillaging. If Haradoun came a second time, the second fall of Rhunballa would be far more terrible than the first. Cold logic said they should use Fallah’s weapons to give them an edge if battle were joined. But, if they lost---

"If we lose---" Eowyn raised a hand to wave absently at the two young girls who were calling out to them as they passed from the open laundries and wool dyers’. Were they new students? Eowyn could not place their faces, but the Watch’s Apprentice Cot had so many new girls in the past few months she was losing track of the newer ones. "If we lose," she repeated, "Haradoun will have this science. He would turn it upon the West and the Southlands."

"Then we must take great care not to lose," Fallah said in her most reasonable voice.

And to this, Eowyn could only nod. She could think of no other way to achieve both ends. Gandalf the Grey’s words echoed in her mind, an old memory she had tucked away in some back room of her mind until this moment. He had been counceling her to take the riskier strategy during a game of Thrones she had been steadily losing to Theodred on a long winter’s night a few months before her twelfth birthday.

Sometime, my dear, he had said, we must risk everything we have to win the day.

"It is a valid concern that this intelligence not be leaked to anyone who might bear rumor of it back to Harad, Most Favored One." Sharadi, Indassa’s Treasury Minister, had the rich rolling voice of a professional orator.

The old woman’s words bounded around the white-tiled walls of the Royal Villa, carrying easily to everyone in the room. It jarred Eowyn out of her own worried thoughts. So far, no one had made any mention of explosions in the Dustlands. That was an unlooked-for blessing. Her movements and actions were more closely watched than she liked to admit, Eowyn knew. Many of the women in Queen’s Council looked upon her with suspicion or outright antagonism for her closeness to the Queen, for the strange trust their monarch placed in this pale-skinned stranger from a land whose warriors had slain their husbands or sons on the Fields of Pellenor. In the year since Eowyn’s appointment to Queen’s Guard, this hostility had only grown greater.

That suited Eowyn well enough. She had little use for most of these wealthy widows of Rhunballa’s powerful men. They put on airs of acquired nobility and turned up their noses at honest work and poor, honest people. They were spoiled and petty. They looked down upon the folk whose fathers had come to Rhunballa from the South and Far East, people like Fallah and Ikako, simply because their Haradrim forefathers had conquered these nations. They called them slave races, natural subordinates to the children of Harad. How they could claim to be ruling class when they accepted no responsibility at all toward those they claimed to rule was beyond Eowyn. A king, Theoden had taught her, or a Queen, was the servant of the people, not the other way around.

All these things were only additions to the ever-growing list of reasons why these nightly Council meetings were something Eowyn dreaded like slow torture.

The Queen’s Hall was not a throneroom so much as an audience hall, a meeting place for the rulers of Rhunballa to iron out law and policy. Eowyn found the chamber distinctly unnerving because it stood open to the night air. The high, shutterless arched windows that lined either side of the hall lengthwise were so large it was more apt to call the walls collumns. It would be child’s play for anyone, or anything, to come upon the Queen and all her ministers from either side and relieve themselves of both monarch and government in one fell swoop. She frowned and fidgeted uncomfortably, thinking Fallah would laugh and say she was thinking like a Queen’s Guard at every turn now.

There was not a chair in sight. Strewn about the great empty chamber, arranged in neat, receding semi-circles, were large down-filled silken pillows. Indassa had told Eowyn long ago that until her reign, both King and King’s Council had knelt upon the unpadded marbled floor. The old King Udam had confided to his only child on more than one occasion that it was a test of manhood to stand after any long session of government, provided a man still had any circulation in his legs at all. One of Indassa’s her first decisions as Queen had been the addition of the cushions. Eowyn knelt, her legs folded beneath her in Eastern fashion, upon one such pillow, as did every other women in the Queen’s Hall.

Before them, perched atop a cushion of red silk of the same color and material as her gown, sat the Queen of Rhunballa. Indassa was a small, beautiful, immaculately coifed and bejeweled doll of a girl. Tonight, she sat listening to the debate and occasional bickering of the most powerful women in her realm, saying little. She seemed to be lost in her own thoughts.

"Bah!" Said Obari the Wineseller’s wife. "It has been common knowledge among the tradesmen of Laketown that the Western Pass is open." She slanted her dark, coal-lined eyes at Eowyn. It was not a friendly look. Obari had spoken out passionately against the Watch on several occasions, saying its very existence was corrupting the young women of Rhunballa. Obari’s eldest daughter, Shaeri, was commander of the Deep Wells Watch House, and the older woman saw Eowyn as the very incarnation of evil because of this. "Our Lady of the Watch came to us with one of their merchant’s caravans two years ago. Your husband will surely know by now, my Queen."

A warm gust of night air breathed through the Hall, ruffling the crimson silks of Indassa’s gown. Otherwise, she sat immobile and pensive, showing no reaction at all to the older woman’s words. Even now, Eowyn thought sadly, after four years of ruling as unchallenged mistress of her own realm, she still bows to custom, the old Eastern laws of conquest.

Haradoun had lain with her and declared himself her husband. He had forced himself upon her while her aged father’s body was still warm to seal his claim to her lands. In the eyes of every woman present, save Eowyn, they were man and wife. The deed was done. Indassa’s consent, or lack thereof, mattered not at all. That thought always sent a queasy knot of slow burning rage shooting through Eowyn’s belly. Most of the ruling families of Rhunballa were of Haradrim stock. After twenty generations of defection and separation from Harad, many of the people of this land were still, in too many ways, slaves to the customs and laws of the land their fathers had fled.

The Queen of Rhunballa would be nineteen years old in another five months, but she looked much younger. From her Haradrim blood, she had a small-boned, delicate frame that was common in Eastern women. With her rouged lips and coal-lined eyes, Indassa looked like a girl of fourteen dressed up in her mother’s clothes.

"We have always known the Western Passes were not Hunted," Indassa said softly. Her voice, like her face, was a much younger than her years. "There is something there, something they fear. My grandfather told me it was some fearful secret tied to the many sulfur water springs and black oil pools in that area." She raised her eyes and met Eowyn’s gaze directly. Any false illusions that the Queen was a soft-voice girl-child vanished when one looked into Indassa’s eyes. They were clear and direct. At the moment they were burning with aninexplicable mix of purpose and terrible fear.

What is she up to? Eowyn wondered, her stomach clenching with anxiety. What has happened to frighten her so?

There would be no answer to this question until after the others were gone.

"But it is also perilous to mortal feel, as you know well, Eowyn of the North," the Queen continued. "The ground shakes and brings down the cliffsides upon unwary travelers. The earth belches up scalding black founts and acrid gases. My husband will not be so foolish as to attempt to pay us a visit by the Western Road. It is from the South Pass that he will attack. The Eastern Divide is well patrolled by the Hunters and by the Watch, as is the North. You routed out the five score men he sent this spring cramped into the wagons of a commandeered Trader’s Caravan."

"Aye, we did, Highness," Eowyn nodded. "Though I think that was more of a test than an attack. He sacrificed a hundred men to learn whether the way would be barred by mortals or monsters. Though it is beyond disturbing that their ruse made it past the Hunters. I would have thought they would have scented so many human bodies as the Caravan passed the Crags. I’m told they do not normally pass up such a feast."

The words hung there in the air. All the other women, the new Ministers of this tiny kingdom---most of whom had inherited their offices from their dead husbands---were silent. Eowyn’s comment was not a direct challenge to Indassa’s stubborn refusal to believe that the Haradrim would betray them a second time, but it was close enough that one could have cut the sudden tension in the Hall with a knife.

Indassa regarded Eowyn, her delicate olive face as inscrutable as a stone mask. That impassive visage was the one monarchial skill her father had taught the child he had expected give in marriage to the man he picked to succeed him on the throne. Then the Queen sighed artfully. It was an attitude and manner, a kind of off-hand mummery that Eowyn recognized as Indassa at her most insecure. It was Indassa acting the Queen, playing at the role of haughty monarch rather than using her own innate good sense. Masking the fact that Eowyn’s public question had left her feeling hurt and a little betrayed. Eowyn steeled herself inwardly. The girl was probably going to say something horridly sniping or condescending.

"You have only been with us two years, my friend," the little Queen said. "I know well that the idea of relying on the Hunters for protection is unnerving to those who have not had a lifetime to become accustomed to the idea. No one is infallible. Not even monsters." She smiled, making a show of her dimples. "Perhaps we have domesticated them over the centuries."

The room echoed with appreciative laughter, some false, some honestly amused. Eowyn cursed her fair skin that showed to all present what they surely took for red-faced shame. Inwardly, she was seething. Indassa was getting much better at the art of politics, she thought sourly. In the space of two breaths Indassa had effectively destroyed any credibility Eowyn could have ever hoped to achieve concerning her fears about the Hunters. The young Queen’s seemingly gentle reproof had made Eowyn seem like a skittish foreigner, a New-Comer who was still learning the ways of this land.

"But come, my sisters," Indassa went on in the chiding voice of an elder sibling. "We must not mock these fears. Everyone of our forefathers wrestled with the same terror. Our Lady Eowyn takes her Captaincy of the Watch and the protection of Rhunballa’s people to heart with a passion that I cannot fault." For one brief instant the Queen met her eyes again and this time Eowyn thought she saw a silent apology there.

Eowyn counted to ten, considering and discarding several possible replies. Whatever words she might have found were silenced as the warm night air about them dropped sharply as though a shivering blaster of untimely winter had shot through the open arches. The room went deathly silent. No one moved or spoke. The faces of one or two of the older women drained of blood. Eowyn glanced about the room at the blanched expressions of stark terror around her, finally coming to rest on Indassa. The Queen sat motionless upon her throne of satin pillows, still as a rabbit that is eye to eye with a wolf. Eowyn’s hand came to rest upon the hilt of her sword, a terrible suspicion taking shape in her mind.

"We have company, my ladies," said Indassa in a remarkably steady voice.

"Oh gods," said Matab the Weaver’s wife. "Oh gods of earth and sky, they have come to ask for a g-gift as they did once in my father’s day. T-they wish us to offer one of our number to them as proof of our friendship!"

One or two of the others began to whisper furtively. An instant later they were all on their feet, rising with small shrieks, poised to flee. Eowyn suddenly saw why.

There was something, some thing, standing upon the open sill of one of the Hall’s great windows. It was man-shaped, like a living shadow. He stepped off the window, out of the half-light, and his bare feet made no sound as they touched the white marble floor. He strode forward and the night hung about him. Like a Ring Wraith, he seemed to repel light, to push it before him as he advanced.

Eowyn was already on her feet, moving to stand between Indassa and the Hunter. How many were they? Or was he alone? Gazing at the night-spawned thing as he approached she could feel no fear, only a deep satisfaction that she would finally have a chance to slay one the of the creatures who had left that bloodied doll and a still, empty house in their wake. The ring of her sword clearing its scabbard was incongruously loud in the paralyzed silence. Eowyn met the dead thing’s eyes with cold, unflinching antipathy as he halted less than ten paces before her, returning her stare with a look of detached inhuman curiosity.

He was, or he had once been, an Elf, she realized with horror. The image of Legolas’ face leapt into her mind. The memory, four years old now, of his kindness to the broken girl-child she had been, of how he had shone like a candle of comfort and hope as the daylight died around him, had stayed with her. It was a treasured memory of the beauty and magic that seemed to be slowly fading from the world in the wake of Sauron’s fall. The mere thought of the ageless peace of spirit and beauty of an Elf corrupted and blackened into the undead specter before her filled her with rage and pity.

"So fearless." His voice crawled over her skin and seemed to reverberate inside her head. The sensation was too close to the slithering whisper of Grima’s invasive presence in her mind. A wave of nauseous paralytic terror

froze her sword hand and cemented her feet where she stood.

Something---something was shoving itself into her mind, pressing at her will, telling her to stop, to behave, to obey like a good girl. She gasped, high and shrill, uttering a little shriek of blind panic.

A breath of cold, beautiful laughter. "Or are you?" His voice hissed inside her head.

She pushed with all her might, with every ounce of will her spirit possessed, and the sound of that sweet laughter was gone from her head.

She could move again. He had moved forward, his mocking smile turning to honest wide-eyed surprise when she raised her sword, the tip poised at his throat. She stared him down, cold and unshaking.

"What do you think?" She asked softly.

He was beautiful beyond the reach of mere words, even fallen into darkness as he was. He was naked from the waste up, clad in only billowing black trousers, his flawless ivory skin gleaming bloodlessly in the torchlight. And again, she thought of Legolas. The idea of what the one before her had been, of just how far he had been dragged down into shadow, made her heart twist with sorrow even as she held her blade ready to strike him down. Had he screamed when they made him one of them, she wondered. Had he begged them to simply kill him and let him keep his light, his Elven soul untainted?

He threw back his head of hip-length midnight hair and laughed. The bell-like sound was sweet as cold, poisoned wine. "Is that pity I see behind you pretty eyes, sweet one?"

"I pity the Elf you once were," she replied. "But that does not mean I will not put you out of your misery!" She swung her sword.

The stroke sliced through empty air.

He moved faster than her eyes could track the motion. Before her blow had even finished its arc he was behind her. One cold arm snaked around her, pinning both arms to her sides, numbing them with the inhuman strength of his grip. Still she did not drop her sword. A hand like living ice clamped over her sword hand, slowly crushing. The sword clattering on the marble tiles of the floor was as loud as a scream.

"You are immune to influence," he murmured against her hair. "Interesting."

She could not move or twist free. His arm around her might have been wrought of pure mithril for all she could dislodge it. She settled for stomping his feet. It was a pitiful tactic, but it was all she had left. The arm around her body tightened again, almost casually, pressing the air from her lungs.

Soft, cruel laughter in her ear. "Do no fret over me, sweet elanor." His breath stank of blood and butchery. It was the smell of charnel houses. She hitched a tiny gulp of air by straining against him with every ounce of strength in her body. She could not breathe! He was going to slowly squeeze the life out of her and laugh as he did it. It she could have drawn in a chest full of wind she would have shrieked like a mad thing. She was not sure whether she would have been screaming with rage or terror. His cold body was at her back, his ice-hewn hand threading through her hair, coming to rest upon the pulse at her throat. She knew he could feel her heart slamming against her breastbone. The smell of her fear was probably as heady a scent to him as her blood. That thought nearly sent her mad again with rage. I will kill him! I must kill him!

"I chose this doom of my own free will, love," he breathed against her throat. "This darkness is pleasure beyond the ken of your sweetest, blushing virgin’s dreams. Shall I share it with you?" The prick of sharp, feral teeth trailing across that thin skin of her throat drew a strangled moan from her. She could not breathe. The world was going gray. She was about to faint.

"Morsul!" Indassa’s shrill, frightened voice rang out like a whip crack. "Your mistress did not give you leave to spill blood in my Hall!"

The crushing weight around her chest vanished magically. She sagged to the floor at his feet, gasping for breath, one hand already fumbling for her fallen sword.

"I did but test her courage, Highness," the Hunter said. A bare, bone-white foot swept beneath the blade of Eowyn’s sword, sending it skidding across the Hall toward Indassa. "You Captain of the Watch tenacious in her duty. And there is precious little fear in her." His dark, honeyed baritone was both amused and admiring.

Eowyn tried to rise to her knees but the floor seemed to wobble beneath her. She fell forward on her face, still struggling for breath. Had he broken all of her ribs?

"You overstep the bounds of hospitality to presume to test my servants!" Indassa said in cold anger. "Give me your message!"

Morsul bowed ironically. Eowyn raised her head, trying to see Indassa. The nails of the Hunter’s bare feet were encrusted with brown. As though he had waded barefoot in a river of gore…

"My mistress sends word that the day is at hand," Morsul said. "Our scouts have brought word that Haradoun is marching upon the Defiant City with a company of two thousand."

The other women---all of whom were at the moment cowering behind their child Queen like frightened sheep---uttered a collective gasp.

"He will reach the Southern Pass just before dawn," Morsul went on. "He has offered us many lovely gifts in exchange for safe passage. We excepted the sweet morsels he gave us and agreed that he might enter the Vale of Hundred Springs unmolested. They are many, O Queen, and they will arrive at an hour when our power grows weakest. But we will greet them for you. Have your lovely Captain and the brave Watch guard the mouth of the Pass to mop up strays. A thousand strong Haradrim soldiers and a another thousand of their foreign allies is beyond riches to us and will keep the Vales of Rhunballa safe from our hunger for many a year."

"They will betray you, Indassa!" Eowyn choked out the words.

"Nay, sweetling!" The Hunter laughed. "We are creatures of habit. The old alliance with Rhunballa has kept both my people and the Rhunballani free, fat and happy for a millennium. It shall be as it has ever been. They shall have their safety. We shall have game to hunt. There are two who travel among the foreign soldiers with whom my mistress is most anxious to make an acquaintance. The others shall fill our larders."

"And Haradoun?" Indassa asked softly.

"Your eager bridegroom?" Morsul smiled, baring his teeth. "Him we shall bring to you bound and alive, little Queen. You may widow yourself at your leisure."

A tiny sigh escaped the Queen’s lips. "Until dawn, then."

"Until then," Morsul agreed. He knelt beside Eowyn and lifted her gently, helping her sit even as she struggled in vain to shake off his hand. He peered into her face. It was like being eye to eye with a cobra. "I have never met a mortal with the will to refuse my thirst once I touched their mind. But I saw much that was interesting therein before you thrust me out."

"Liar," Eowyn croaked.

"Am I?" He smiled slyly. "Who is the pretty Silvan youth, the golden-haired archer whose memory fills your heart with such comfort?"

Eowyn spat out an unprintable phrase she had learned from Forodwaith troll hunters in the Far North three years before.

"Such dainty words from a daughter of kings," he laughed delightedly.

She leveled a gaze with all the warmth of chipped ice at him. "If you know so very much about me, shadow Elf," she replied, "then you know that I have slain far greater demons that you. I will slay you as well, I swear it!"

"We shall see," he said amiably.

The next instant he was gone. A burst of dark wind stirred Eowyn’s sweat-soaked hair. She sat on her backside, one arm shielding her bruised ribcage, not trying to rise. She inhaled slowly, relishing the sensation of unrestricted breath, barely hearing Indassa’s soft voice commanding the others to leave.

When they were gone, the Queen extended one delicate, ruby-ringed hand. Eowyn did not take the hand. She stared into Indassa’s frightened young face, trying to find some trace of shame or indecision. There was none. The girl was resolute, utterly sure of her present course. The only thing that was giving Indassa pause at all was the terrible worry that she had alienated Eowyn in a permanent fashion by her actions.

"Why did you keep this from me?" Eowyn asked.

"Because it was only a possibility until tonight," Indassa replied. "I received correspondence from the Queen of the Hunters weeks ago, a letter on my bedchamber pillow."

Eowyn blanched, picturing Morsul in Indassa’s bedchamber. Indassa knelt beside her, biting her bottom lip, watching Eowyn’s face. "She told me Haradoun was trying to woo them with bribes. She has a personal grudge against him as well, I think. Her pride was injured when she was forced to bow to his desires four years ago, fearing the wrath of Mordor if she did not. And I did not tell you, also, because you would have thrown the fit of fits."

"It is a trap, Indassa!"

"Aye," the Queen said softly. "On that we are agreed. Eowyn, in less than one day I will be a widow and my kingdom will be free of the threat---"

"Did you not listen?!" Eowyn shouted, losing all semblance of control. "Haradoun will arrive at the Pass ‘just before dawn’, the monster said. Before first light?! When even full daylight is no real protection against the Hunters in the mountain passes?! They will deliver you into Haradoun’s hands a second time and enslave all those who look to you to protect them!"

"They will deliver Haradoun to me alive!" Indassa screamed back at her. "Their Queen promised me. She promised! I have had four years to decide how best to kill him, Princess of Rohan! I will not let him live another year with the stain of Rhunballa’s blood on his hands! I will not! I will not!" Her voice broke at the end of that strident shout. Her heart-shaped face crumbled. And with it, most of Eowyn’s anger. Black tears were rolling down the girl’s young face leaving her cheeks streaked with coal eye-makeup. The Indassa weeping before her now was not a Queen. She was a wounded child who had lain down every night for four years with the nightmares wrought by Haradoun and awakened every day to the dread that he would come again. The images that conjured in Eowyn’s mind swept away any anger she had left at the suicidally risky alliance the Queen had just forged with the Hunters.

The plight of the frightened, unsure sixteen-year-old Indassa had been two years ago had torn at Eowyn’s heart on their first meeting, laying the framework for a love that was more that of an older sister than a loyal soldier and subject. It had bound Eowyn to this land in a way that even the looming danger of invasion and slaughter of its people could not have achieved. She had seen too much of her younger self in the child Queen---the only father she had ever known slain before her eyes, the sweet and precious first act of love ruined forever by the mauling, greedy hands of a human monster.

"I must kill him, Eowyn!" Indassa sobbed. "Do you not see that I must!?"

"More than you know," Eowyn said. She raised one hand and took the kerchief Indassa was wringing in one of her small hands, using it to wipe away the black tears streaks. She did this in gentle silence, thinking very carefully about what she would say next. Sharadi, Obari and the other women in Queen’s Council were the covert authors of a malicious lie that had begun to surface just after Eowyn’s appointment to Queen’s Guard---the rumor that Eowyn, not Indassa, now ruled Rhunballa. They feared Eowyn had too much influenced their young Queen, these women told their friends and family. The plainest truth was that Eowyn had come to Rhunballa to find the Queen’s Council ruling in the Queen’s stead, berating and badgering the girl into agreeing to their every suggestion at every turn. The Indassa Eowyn had befriended two years ago had been firmly convinced that any decision she made on her own would be dangerous to her kingdom, childishly incompetent. Eowyn’s ‘influence’ upon the Queen had been a slow campaign of encouragement and support that led to Indassa ruling her kingdom and Council in truth rather than in name only. To try now and strong-arm the Queen into changing her mind would make all of Obari’s lies true. At the end of the day, however strongly Eowyn disagreed with the girl’s policies, Indassa must be mistress here.

"Two years ago, my Queen, " Eowyn said finally, "you asked me to build you a standing army to defend your kingdom, and I agreed. One year ago, you gave me the honor of also declaring me Queen’s Guard. I accepted this duty with joy. Part of that duty is that I must always tell you the truth as I see it. I must always be on the lookout for threats against yourself and your people. I cannot approve of feeding mortal men---even evil men---to these creatures of darkness and blood. But you are ruler here, not I. By your command the Watch will form a gauntlet at the mouth of the Southern Pass. But I would ask you, implore you, to grant me one concession in this. We must guard against the bandit before us, but also against the wolf in our fold. A queen must always be wary of treachery, especially when circumstances force her to make deals with murderous beasts such as the Hunters. If the Hunters slay Haradoun’s warriors, well and good. But if they are in league with him---if, I say---we must be prepared to slay both man and beast. Give me leave to guard my warriors and your people against this possibility."

Indassa was silent her face a strained mask of indecision. "What---what will you do?"

"If they keep faith with you? Nothing. But a Captain of soldiers---or a Queen---should prepare for any possibility. We must always have a secondary plan if our initial designs go awry."

Indassa sniffled, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. "After Poppa---after Poppa died, I read his journals. He wrote in them every day of his reign. Do you know what he wrote only two days before he died? He said that he wished kingship came with a book to study, a manual of sorts like the carpenter’s guild uses. He said after nearly thirty-five years on the throne he still felt as though he were just fuddling along with no idea at all what he was doing most of the time." A last solitary tear slip down one cheek. "I feel like that every day. I---I thought I was being so clever, but---but I had never seen one of the Hunters in the flesh until two nights ago. He—he was charming at first. He did not show himself for what he truly is until tonight. They---they are terrible, Eowyn!"

"Yes," Eowyn agreed heartily, rubbing at her throat where the night thing’s teeth had touched her. She felt dirty all over, but that was nothing compared to the sickened shame of having been helpless and at the mercy of such a creature. By Eorl’s bones, she would kill him for that if it cost her life!

"Do not attack them unless they attack or betray us openly," Indassa said slowly. "If they prove false---do whatever is necessary to save my people."

Eowyn breathed a heavy sigh of relief. She took the other woman’s smaller hands in hers and gripping them reassuringly. "As you command, my Queen."

Eowyn tore open the doors of the Queen’s Guard Watch House, her head whirling with fear and the dark elation that always lay coiled in the pit of her stomach before battle. All conversation halted as she entered the large common room. Seeing the faces arrayed before her, she suddenly remembered that she had called a meeting of the Commanders of every Watch House tonight. She did not stop to wonder at this serendipitous coincidence.

"Gather your Houses, my ladies," she said in a carrying voice. "I am sending a call to arms to every Watch House. Haradoun marches upon Rhunballa. He will reach the South Pass by dawn. All of you, gird yourselves and see to your duties. You each know what they are---we have all drilled for this many times."

There was a moment of complete silence, then the room erupted into an excited babble of voices, everyone tearing in opposite directions toward their preassigned emergency tasks.

"So, it has come at last," Ikako said coolly. The small weapons wright, Eowyn’s second in Queen’s Guard House, was more than a full head shorter than Eowyn but the strength in her powerful smith’s arms could outmatch a man thrice her size. "It is almost a relief."

"It is much better than waiting," Shaeri agreed. The bright-eyed commander of Deep Wells Watch House was grinning openly in anticipation.

"It is wonderful!" Said Somal, Fallah’s young cousin. He was seventeen, and one of the few men of Rhunballa to return from the Battle of Pellennor Fields. "Tonight we will finally have our revenge."

"Or a sword in the belly," Ikako said dryly.

"They are two thousand strong," Eowyn said softly. "The Hunters will do most of the slaying. Or so they say." She lowered her voice further, telling them everything she knew or suspected of the Hunters’ plans. "We must ride for the South Pass in two hours to be in position before dawn. Let me know when the Watch Houses are mustered and have the Commanders of each House decide which apprentices are ready for true battle. Somal, go find your cousin. She will be at her shop in Physician’s Street. Tell Fallah that her hour may have come. Tell her to bring everything she has!"

Eowyn spent another few moments giving out a round of curt organizational commands, sending nearly everyone in the main barracks scattering to opposite ends of the Vale. When they were gone, she passed through the commons hall and moved like a sleepwalker to her own rooms. She untapped the faucet that ran from the Watch House’s water tower to her bath. She stripped gingerly, taking stock of the bruises on her arms and ribs. Nothing felt broken. There was no time for this, but as she stepped naked into the cool water she knew she would fly into a hysterical fit very soon if she did not wash the filth of the Hunter'’ touch from her body now.

She concentrated on bathing methodically, trying hard to think of nothing as she scrubbed the skin raw at the base of her throat where the Hunter’s lips had touched her. It did not remove the twisting horror of being held immobilized in the dead thing’s arms. It had been a very long time since anyone or anything had made her feel so helpless, so defeated. A mad, irrational part of her hoped that her worst suspicions were right---that she and the Watch were walking into a trap. It would mean an end to this parody of an alliance and she would be able to exterminate Morsul and all his brood unhindered. Her fist clenched in reactive rejection of the compromise she had just made with Indassa. Mankind did not fight beside monsters, they slew them!

She rose trembling, toweling her skin and hair dry, trying to think of a better way to rid Rhunballa of Haradoun, a way that did not involve the Hunters. A way that did not leave three quarters of the Watch dead even in victory. There was not one. Even Fallah’s fireworks were untried in battle, a gamble at best. She did not rebraid her hair in the Eastern manner, but instead, bound it up and back in the high horse’s tail the Riders of her homeland wore. She stared at herself in the full-length mirror, her face pensive.

Jabri the Glassblower had given her the mirror in thanks for ejecting a gaggle of brawling Laketown and Sabadi Tradesmen from her shop before they destroyed it. No one born in Rhunballa gave it any thought at all, but to Eowyn’s mind, it was diabolically practical that the Hunters allowed Trade Caravans to come and go as they would, always ferreting out the imposters. Until that incident six months ago. Had the Hunters been curious about the Watch, Eowyn wondered? Had they let that small band of Haradrim through, pretending to be fooled by their stolen Caravan wagons, in order to test the effectiveness of the Watch in true battle?

The men of Sabad, Laketown and the cities south of the Rhun Sea came twice a year to buy and sell. Sometimes these visits would overlap and then the occasional fistfight would break out. Eowyn smiled wryly. Almost all of these fights were centered around who thought himself the biggest cock in the hen house, so to speak. The Tradesmen always came to Rhunballa, a city bereft of its men, thinking to find themselves surrounded by desperate, love-starved women who would leap upon them the instant they alighted from their wagons and drag them off the bedchamber.

Actually, in truth, a fair amount of that sort of thing did happen. In the two years she had dwelt in the Vale of Hundred Springs Eowyn had noticed many of these caravaners found the climate so hospitable that they settled in to stay, having their pick of literally hundreds of eager widows and maids when they chose to wed. The men of the East and the Rhun Sea did well here, but Eowyn privately suspected that within one generation the mixing pot of ethnicity and skin-tones of the common folk of Rhunballa would receive a strong infusion of Laketown blood. The fair-skinned sons of Laketown had never heard of veils or latticed harem windows. They did not wish their women to walk a pace behind them on the way to market. They took only one wife. All these things had made them very, very popular with the younger women of Rhunballa.

In the first bitter year that followed the War of the Ring, the women of the Defiant City had mourned their men with unnumbered tears. But as the deepest grief of that first terrible year began to ease with the passage of time, a strange thing had happened. They put away their veils and donned their husband’s trades and offices. They yoked the oxen themselves and plowed their own fields, bought and sold with the copper and silver they had earned with their own hands. They managed their homes and little shops without asking advice or permission from the men they had loved so dearly. And slowly, they had come to the collective realization that every facet of their lives was now in their own hands. Their fortunes no longer turned on the whim of father, husband or brother. A few of the older women, especially those of the ruling classes---families of pure Haradrim descent all---mourned this state of affairs. They spoke eloquently in Queen’s Council of how this would lead to the destruction of the natural family unit and common decency in general. But for the most part, in the hearts and minds of the young women of Rhunballa, a new day had dawned.

There was so much good in this little kingdom, so much potential for greatness. Eowyn could not, would not, let it be destroyed by Haradoun or the Hunters.

She shivered, standing naked before the mirror, as she drew a roll of bandage rags from a cupboard beside the bath and began binding her bruised ribs. The feel of the cold creature shoving himself inside her mind was going to bring on a fresh spate of dreams, she was sure. It had been nearly two years now that she had been sleeping every night through, her rest untroubled by nightmares of the past. The thought of lying down to dream again of Grima Wormtongue after so long made her eyes burn as though she had rubbed soap in them.

It was the closest she could come to tears. She had not been able to weep at all in more than four years.

She finished wrapping up her ribs, eyeing herself critically as she pulled on clean, wide-legged cotton trousers, reaching for her jerkin and black tunic, wondering what she had done with her knee guards. The rest of her leathers and light mail was somewhere at the foot of her bed.

She was still willow-slim, though perhaps her breasts had filled out a bit.

She knew that the last four years had given her the weight of added strength. Her arms, back and thighs hid the cut of muscle until she flexed. She was tall, and so, had not been forced to sacrifice what most men deemed a feminine frame for strength as tiny Ikako had. But then Eowyn was not a weapons wright either. Eowyn’s face had altered little, though perhaps baby roundness had faded away to reveal her cheekbones more prominently. If anything, she looked younger now at seven and twenty than she had before her flight from Minas Tirith as everything she had ever known. Her face was more relaxed. There were no lines and shadows beneath her eyes born of sleeplessness.

She drew one finger across the two angry red marks at her jugular where the Hunter’s teeth had scraped the skin. Eomer and Theoden had kissed her cheek and forehead, both embracing her with loving words as they left to ride to war, not knowing that she would be riding with them. Her father, a gruff, kind-faced, distant memory, had kissed her and told her to be good before he had left to meet his end in Emyn Muil. The only other time in all her life she had felt the touch of a man’s lips had been the night of Grima’s dreamspell. Wormtongue and now this night creature---the only two men not of her own blood to have kissed her. Merciful Eru, she did not want to die never having known anything else! Never having taken joy in a man’s arms.

She stood straight before the mirror, fully clothed and girded for battle, hardening her face. The sad, vulnerable expression she had worn a moment before would not do at all. She could hear Fallah’s voice in the outer barracks room, telling her cousin to keep his torch away from the contents of the two drums he was carrying unless he wanted to be blown half a league into the air. Whatever she had brought stank of sulfur and burning coal.

It was time to go out and organize the Watch House muster. Win or lose, she had the chill premonition that everything in her world was about to change. Again. She took a slow, deep breath and turned away from her reflection, striding forward to face her future headon.

"---and he was tall and pale white as a young sycamore tree!" Shaeri was saying audibly somewhere in the darkness nearby. "Though not nearly as wide."

Suni Gau’s daughter, commander of the Bent Bow Watch House, chuckled from where she knelt a few feet to Eowyn’s right. "Was that the one you likened to a spring stallion, saying he was want to buck?"

Rude snickers from all around. Somal’s cream-in-carob complexion was flaming red with embarrassment. It was sometimes hard on the youngster to be one of only five men in all the Watch. Eowyn had been raised around fighting men. She had grown up hearing, if only peripherally, the kind of unseemly stories men tell one another as they wait to kill or die on their lord’s command. The Watch of Rhunballa put them all to shame.

Beside Somal, Fallah continued industriously adding heaping spoonfuls of black burning powder to the rocket her cousin was holding, muttering to herself about increased blast radius’.

They were nearly nine hundred strong, now. Still far too few to turn back a full out assault from Harad, Eowyn knew. But Fallah’s contraptions might be effective equalizers if the worst happened. Eowyn only hoped it would be enough. The entrance to the Pass was only thirty yards across and the cliffs were high and sheer on either side. The Watch was fanned out before the bottleneck, dug in behind thick man-high metal shields the apprentice cots used for sword practice and every large rock they could find. This close the red clay and granite mountains of Dhak-Ral large rocks were plentiful.

On Eowyn’s left, Fallah was giving Somal explicit instructions on what to do, and more importantly, what not to do if he did not wish to burn both his hands off should there be need of the fireworks tube she had given him.

"I heard you the first time!" He said grumpily. "I am a man now, you know. You should not treat your only living kinsman with so little respect. I am not stupid!"

"No," she said firmly. "You are not stupid, Sommi---you are precious to me. And what you hold in your hands could kill you as easily as our enemies if you do not respect how dangerous it is."

"Humph!" He grunted something unhappy about uppity women, before glancing around to see if anyone else had heard that comment. It would go ill for him at the next training session if they had. "I have always wondered what a skylighter would do if you aimed it at the ground rather than the heavens," he said after a moment’s thought.

"It makes a very large hole," Eowyn told him.

"Sommi has the last of them," Fallah told her, sitting beside Eowyn, in the shelter of a great shale rock. "I think everyone who has a tube knows more or less how to use them. On your command they will fire if it becomes necessary."

"Let us hope that it does not," Eowyn said fervently. "Let everyone be silent!" she commanded. "First light draws nigh."

They waited.

The stars overhead began to fade slowly. The sky lightened ever-so-slightly, heralding dawn. The night had cooled off considerably, and with the cool air had come the fog that seemed to cling to the mountains around this valley like a second skin. It was thick, effectively obscuring their view of the Pass even from fifty yards away. Everything echoed eerily. Sound carried too well here, rebounding to the Pass walls and back again, making it difficult to discerned who was where. Oh, Eru, this was a recipe for disaster if anything at all went amiss!

When the noise began, it was very like the distant cry of a flock of birds, singing to greet the coming morn. The sound grew steadily louder, more distinct. It was not the sound of birds or anything that remotely resembled song. It was the noise of dozens---no, hundreds---of men and horses screaming in mortal terror. And it was coming closer.

"Stand ready!" Eowyn snapped, feeling rather than hearing fear gathering around her, infecting the others.

The sound went on and on. Eowyn felt her mouth run dry of spit as she listened, envisioning what must be happening to the men in those dark granite corridors. Perhaps it was her imagination, but she thought she could hear the kindling wood snap of cracking bones and the wet tearing noise of rent flesh.

"Suni!" She shouted. "Ready your archers! They are getting closer. Some of them may reach the bottleneck!"

A light was approaching, brilliant even around the bend of the inner pass’s corridor. The rumbling sound of many hooves tearing toward them.

"Stay in the light!" A man’s voice was shrieking, his terrified voice thick with the guttural accents of Far Harad. "Follow it out of this death maze! They fear the light!"

"Swords!" Eowyn shouted. "Everyone except the fireworks brigade!"

Eowyn drew her own blade. They were many by the sound of their hooves. Too many! Suni’s archers bent their bows.

The light-bearer’s horse rounded the last bend of the inner Pass’s twisting path and came galloping toward them. He rode out of the black maw of the South Pass, holding something aloft in one hand that was bright and blazing like a star fallen to earth. Perhaps three score men were gathered close around him, huddled inside the protective light. Another hundred surrounded them, but they---

Oh, Elbereth! The men not directly inside the light were being plucked off their horses even after they cleared the pass. Black streaks of movement, the blurring impression of batlike wings, fell upon them from above. Hooked talons sank into human flesh, dragging them shrieking into the darkness.

"Form a ring inside the halo, lads!" A gruff man’s voice bellowed. Eowyn had one instant of shock to realize that this speaker was not Haradrim. Was his accent Westron? It sounded strange, almost familiar.

Then a man came tearing toward her, sword drawn, and she met him with the point of her blade. A second man dodged around her and kept running. The Haradrim were not interested in fighting, not even expecting to meet mortal warriors as they scrambled blindly away from the maw of the Pass. They were thinking of nothing more than saving their own skins. From all sides now Eowyn could hear the deadly song of steel against steel.

Another soldier leapt forward, his dark hair matted, his bloody face blanched. She parried his wild swing and their blades clashed. She stared into his face. His eyes were as blue as her own. An instant later, something whipped out of the dark fog and swept him upward into the air, screaming. She stared at the space where he had stood, horrified. He was gone. His broken buckler lay on the ground, the only evidence that he had been there at all.

It bore the crest of the White Tree of Gondor.

Oh, Lady of Light---

In the same instant, Eowyn heard Suni’s voice cry the command to her archers to fire.

Horses screamed, and the men sheltering inside the candle of light screamed also as the arrows struck home. The burning torch of silver light fell to earth, but it did not go gutter or dim.

"Stand firm!" A young man’s clear voice, like a ringing bell, called out. "Do not fear! The sun is rising!"

"Shaeri! Shaeri!" Somal screamed suddenly. "She is gone! Eowyn, something---something took her from right beside me!"

"Shushila! Matta!" A girl’s voice was crying. "Where are you?!"

"They are killing the Watch!" Ikako shouted, her voice disembodied in the soup-thick fog. "Eowyn! The Hunters are taking the Watch! We are betrayed!"

"Fireworks!" Eowyn called. "Pass the command down the line! Fire! Fire straight into the air!"

Another man came at her, this one a son of Harad. He threw his sword at her feet, sobbing like a small boy. "Kill me! Kill me, woman! Do not let the Dhak-dir take me!"

She struck him with the hilt of her sword, knocking him senseless, cursing Haradoun of Harad, the Hunters, Indassa and her own foolishness. Gondorian soldiers! What in the names of all the Valar where Gondorian soldiers doing riding with---?!

The first of the fireworks rockets went soaring upward in a blazing arc. It exploded in a shower of heat and light that scalded the skin on Eowyn’s face even from a hundred feet above. The airburst sent burning debris downward in a black, charred shower. In spite of the screams and smoke and death all around her Eowyn smiled grimly when she saw what fell back to earth. The flame-wreathed shapes of Hunters, shrieking like damned souls trapped in the endless night outside of creation, spun downward, writhing and clawing at thin air. The old legends Fallah’s fathers told about the Hunters were right. They burned like rice paper when set afire. Everywhere Fallah’s rocket tubes were firing, setting the sky alight.

"Take the survivors alive!" Eowyn shouted to Suni and Ikako. "Pass the command along!"

She turned and saw Somal, who was still kneeling beside his skylighter tube, holding his flint in shaking hands. He lit the wick fuse an instant before a running man stumbled over him, knocking the tube from his hands. As it fell forward, it launched, straight into the knot of men fifty yards away who were crowded back to back within the lighthouse blaze of whatever holy thing they bore that was glowing so fiercely, warding off the Hunters. It struck dead center of their band, and it showed them as little mercy as the other rockets had shown the Hunters.

Eowyn began running across the open expanse of ground toward the group of men. Bright shafts of morning light were shooting over the Eastern peaks behind them, falling on her face like salvation. Above her, Eowyn could see open pools of brightening blue where Fallah’s skylighters had literally blown away the fog, letting the morning shine through. And just like that, the surviving Hunters were gone, retreating for the moment into the shadowed corridors of the Pass. On all sides of her she could see the Haradrim falling on their faces before the Watch in thanks for rescue, surrendering. The handful of Gondorian warriors, whom she could distinguish clearly now in the waxing light, had sheathed their weapons. They were all running toward the smoking clump of men and horses where Somal’s rocket had struck. She knew, somehow just knew, that the majority of those who had been sheltering in the light of that brilliant protective halo had been men of Gondor, not Haradrim.

She stumbled to a stop, staring around at what was left of them. A man in the arms of Gondor halted at her shoulder. He stood dazedly beating out the smoke from his smoldering cloak. Had he been thrown clear by the blast. They stood side by side a moment in silent horror. Eowyn remembered again the fearful image she had conjured only yesterday of what one of Fallah’s weapons would do to a company of men and horses. No imagined horror could have prepared her for the reality. She pressed one hand to her mouth to keep from retching.

"We did this," she whispered. "I did this."

"I saw that running Haradrim bowl the lad over just before he fired his---his fire arrow, boy," the tall, gray-eyed man beside her said grimly. It was so strange how trousers and light armor could make most men think they were looking at a boy rather than a woman. "This was an accident. But your soldiers have attacked and slain mine. That was not an accident."

"It was not," Eowyn agreed. She clenched her fists at her sides to stop her hands from shaking. "I am---" Eowyn paused, her eyes stinging. What could she possibly say to this man, this Captain of Gondor by his garments, as he stood gazing around him in numb shock at the—the pieces that were left of his men? "I am Captain of the Rhunballani Watch, defenders of this kingdom. We came here today to kill an invasion force of Haradrim."

He did not seem surprised by her words. Or perhaps he was beyond anything as prosaic of surprise at the moment.

"I am Hurin son of Magron of Gondor," he said quietly, carefully. "I do not yet fully understand what has happened here this morn, but I do know that if not for your fire weapons we would all be dead now."

She had been a fool! A criminally incompetent fool to style herself a general, fit to lead soldiers into full-out battle. All that passes in battle, Theoden had taught her---victory and defeat, accidents and good fortune---is the pride of fault of the one who commands the field. And here stood this honorable man, ready to grant her absolution over the bodies of his own when her hands were stained red with their blood.

A weak moan rose up from somewhere amid the rubble of charred earth and human remains. They tracked the sound, finding its source, and pulled away the burning body of a large Haradrim warrior to reveal a man who appeared to be dazed but, otherwise, nearly untouched.

"There will be others alive underneath the topmost bodies," the gray-eyed man said.

"Here is another!" A voice called. "Nay---here are two more, Lord Hurin!"

Suddenly there were groans from all around, muffled and full of pain. But alive! Eowyn knelt and shifted a dead man’s body off a pair of moving legs. Her throat tightened, her breath caught in her throat, as she saw he was not burned at all. But he had an arrow with the green fletching of Bent Bow Watch House buried in his belly.

"Unhand me, you giant ox!" Fallah was shouting angrily at the tall soldier blocking her path to the smoking pile of wounded men. Her pretty face was filthy, her spectacles broken and askew. She eyes as she surveyed the damage her handiwork had carved in human flesh were as horrorstruck and guilt ridden as Eowyn’s.

"My Lord!" The soldier said. "This Southron woman says she is a Healer."

"Bring her quickly then!" Hurin said.

Together, the three of them eased the man with the arrow wound away from the burning epicenter of the blast. Fallah began rummaging inside her physician’s bag, issuing orders to the young soldier who had barred her way a moment before in the same elder sister’s tone she used with Somal.

Eowyn followed Hurin back to search for more survivors. The Gondorian Lord’s face was drawn, hard as expressionless stone. It was a look Eowyn recognized, the face of a fighting man who is struggling not to break down and sob for the loss of men he loved like brothers. Eowyn wondered how many women of the Watch the Hunters had taken, how many had fallen to the sword tonight. She wondered if the expression on her face matched Hurin’s.

"Halt!" Cried one of the Hurin’s men.

Eowyn saw now that the Watch was approaching them from all sides now. Some were rallying by instinct to this place simply because Eowyn was here. Others were carrying their own wounded. The soldier who had called halt rose stood from where he had been kneeling beside the dying man with the stomach wound, his young face terrible with grief. The handful of other Gondorian warriors gathered at his side, their hands on their sword hilts. Hurin was regarding the Watch with the grim intensity of a man who wonders how many of the enemy he can kill before they pull him down.

Eowyn touched his arm in a wordless warning as she saw Suni and Ikako warily advancing upon the makeshift little field surgery. They were flanked by the full complement of both their Watch Houses. Eowyn sent up a silent prayer of thanks for Ikako’s cool head, seeing their swords were sheathed, their bows lowered.

"Let them come," she told Hurin quietly. "They are under my command." He stared at her a moment, his face searching hers. "We have slain your men with sword, fire and arrow thinking them Haradrim invaders. Let there be no more bloodshed between us until we have spoken and understand better what happened here today."

He held her eyes a moment longer. Then he nodded curtly. "Let them come!" He called out to the dozen soldiers of Gondor who risen dazed and blistered from the blast, but otherwise unharmed.

"Girls," one of Hurin’s men said as the Watch drew closer. "They are all women!"

Hurin frowned at her in surprise, his mind finally accepting what his eyes had been telling him all along.

"Four years ago," Eowyn said loud enough for the other men to hear, "Haradoun of Harad conscripted every man of Rhunballa old enough to hold a sword. Almost all of them fell at Pellennor Fields. He has tried repeatedly since the fall of Mordor to retake this country for his own. Because of him, there are none left but women to defend this land."

She heard rather than saw the words strike home. However these men had come to ride with the Emperor of Harad’s little army of conquerors, this was not the story they had been told.

"My Captain," Ikako said formally, laying one hand over her heart in salute. She was eyeing Hurin distrustfully, her gaze like flint. "We took a dozen of the Haradrim alive and another four of the Westrons. What shall be done with them?"

"Bind the Haradrim," Eowyn said. "Indassa will decide their fates. How many are fallen?"

"Eighteen are wounded," Ikako replied. "None were killed outright,

but---there are nearly twenty who are simply missing."

"Twenty," Eowyn repeated thickly.

"It would have been much, much worse without Fallah’s fireworks," Suni said. She eyed Hurin pointedly. "What shall be done with the Westrons?"

"My Lord," Eowyn turned back to Hurin. "The Queen of Rhunballa will have many questions for you---not the least of which is what lie Haradoun could have spun to have beguiled soldiers of King Elessar to march at his side a hundred and fifty leagues from the borders of Gondor."

"Beguiled is an apt word, my Lady," Hurin answered grimly. He bowed formally and unbuckled his sword, laying it in her hands. "I will answer your Queen’s questions. Until that time, I commit myself and my men into your custody. But I would ask you to allow my men to care for their wounded."

"Of course," Eowyn replied. "Do not bind the men of Gondor," she commanded. "We have the oath of their captain that they will not attempt for escape. For the moment, let us all work together to care for the wounded."

A little ways away, Fallah was already barking orders at two tall sons of Numenor, arranging the growing count of survivors by severity of their hurts.

"Eowyn!" Somal came pelted up, his young face strained but full of joy. "Shaeri is alive! Her leg is broken, though. Insis’ rocket knocked the Hunter who took her out of the air. But she lives!"

"Eowyn?" Hurin repeated softly.

"Eowyn, sister to the King of Rohan?" Exclaimed one of Hurin’s men. "The Eowyn who slew the Lord of the---?!"

"Marsil!" Hurin said sharply, though he seemed as amazed and the young soldier in his own quiet way. "This is not the time."

"Bring all the wounded here to Fallah and Somal," Eowyn told Suni and Ikako. "We must treat everyone as quickly as we may and get them ready to move." She caught the veiled fear in their eyes and saw they had read her thought before she spoke it aloud. "Daylight will not last forever."

Out of duty and guilty sorrow, Eowyn stayed with Hurin’s men, picking through the Gondorian victims of the errant rocket for living men. It was not as bad as it could have been. Only the outer ring of the soldiers facing the rocket had been---Eowyn swallowed, tasting ashes---had been blown to pieces. The men on the edge of the circle had sheltered the others from the blast. For every burning body they overturned, a live man lay beneath. Thanks be to the Valar for small favors.

"I am not injured, boy!" A deep, rolling voice bellowed suddenly. "Do not bid me lay down again! If you want to help me, help find my friend. He was in the center of the circle, holding the light, so he’s very likely squashed at the bottom of the pile!"

An icy hand of recognition shivered down Eowyn’s spine.

She knew who she would see before her eyes found him. Like a sleepwalker, she moved forward, feeling curiously out of sync with time. It was the sense of her first life about to overlap with her second. The past she had outrun for four years come to call at last.

"Master Gimli!" She said in a remarkably normal voice.

The Dwarf batted away the hand of the earnest young soldier who was trying to help him stand, and squinted furiously. Eowyn bent and used the tail of her own cloak to wipe the blood from his eyes. It was streaming from a deep, ugly gash on his forehead.

He peered up at her in abject shock, not rejecting her gentle hand as she pressed the folded hem of her cloak to his brow to stem the bloodflow.

"Lass?" He asked softly. "Eowyn of Rohan?" Then his bloody face split into a broad, full grin and he gripped her hands and roared, "What in the name of Aule’s Bronze Breechcloth are you doing here, girl?!"

"I---" She had no idea where to begin if she meant to frame a coherent answer. "I am defending this kingdom against the Haradrim," she said stupidly.

"You are---!?

"My Lord Gimli!" Hurin cried urgently. The Gondorian captain was lifting another limp form from the ashes of the human wreckage around them. The entire back half of the man’s body was scorched black and smoking.

"Lay him face-down," Fallah said urgently. "We must cut those leathers from him before they melt against his skin! And the mail shirt also! It is blistering hot!"

Gimli gave a wordless moan of dread and ran to help them ease the smoking figure gently to the ground. Marsil eased off the mail link shirt and Fallah began cutting through the clothing on his back, peeling it away. Eowyn watched and her chest cinched up as she saw there was also a Rhunballani arrow protruding from his thigh.

"Don’t you die on me, lad!" Gimli was saying fiercely. "Don’t you dare!"

As Fallah cut him out of his leather jerkin, the fallen warrior’s hair fell off with it, singed off below the nape of his neck. It was burnt, too, still smoldering, like a handful of gold strands new from the smithy. Even ruined, it was still beautiful, Eowyn though numbly as she sank down beside Gimli. The Dwarf reached out and took his friend’s arm, gently removing the large crystal orb clenched in the limp hand. The orb was still glowing faintly, dimming in the waxing daylight, as though a tiny flame was guttering out at its center.

Eowyn took a swath of one of Fallah’s bandage rolls and wiped the soot from the bloody, unconscious face of Legolas of Mirkwood with shaking hands.

My fault, my fault, the terrible litany sang through her mind. All my fault!

The Price of Freedom

By Erin Lasgalen

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

Chapter II: Fear of Darkness

Eowyn knelt in the Queen’s Hall after finishing her curt, emotionless report of all that had happened at the South Pass. The heat of midday hung oppressively in the air around them as Hurin of Gondor and Gimli told their side of the tale. Beside her, looking as uncomfortable as it was possible for a Dwarf to be, sat Gimli son of Gloin. At the beginning of the interview, he had tried manfully to remain perched atop his pillow but nature had not fashioned his legs with enough length for the task and he kept sliding off to one side. He fought with it valiantly for a while before setting it aside, with a muttered apology to Indassa. Now, he sat cross-legged in Dwarvish fashion, his ruddy face cramped with unslept worry. He had only agreed to leave Legolas’ side after Fallah had sworn upon the souls of her ancestors that the Elf was out of danger.

"Tell me," Indassa had asked them, her child’s face a blank slate that gave away nothing. "How came soldiers of Gondor to march upon my kingdom at the side of their ancient enemies, a hundred and fifty leagues from the borders of Elessar’s realm?" If one did not notice how her hands trembled in her lap one would have thought the Queen perfectly composed.

"The Emperor of Harad came to the court of King Elessar for the first time several months ago," Hurin told her. "He came to sue for an official accord of peace between his nation and ours---something that has never existed. Elessar was suspicious, naturally, particularly in light of the fact that Haradoun has spent the last two years butchering his way to supremacy of all the lands that lie South and East of Gondor. He has united all the peoples who once followed Sauron under his own flag. But when the King pressed him, he told us a tale that made his intentions seem far more coldly practical than a simple wish for peace. He said his northernmost borders were beset by morgul beasts. Blood drinkers that preyed upon armed men, shepherds and babes in the cradle without distinction. He told us they were spreading like a contagion through his lands, changing their captives into their own kind and increasing their numbers, wiping out entire villages."

"Saah!" Indassa swore softly in Haradrim.

Hurin took her meaning without any need of translation. "Our king was much of the same opinion, Highness. This kind of beast has not been seen since the Second Age according to the Wise. But Haradoun was persistent. Months of careful negotiations passed between Haradoun and the King of Gondor, making slow headway toward a workable treaty. Then the Blood Drinkers began attacking Gondor’s outermost North-Eastern borders in Emyn Muil."

Eowyn started, feeling a cold thrill of terror. Emyn Muil was more than a hundred leagues away. How, by all that was holy, could the Hunters have spread so far?!

"Again," Hurin went on, "Haradoun came in person to Minas Tirith, this time nearly begging for aid. He was very eloquent, telling our king that, to his mind, a unified Empire of Harad that encompassed the entire East was a grand and glorious thing. But a unified empire of the walking dead he did not wish. The King was moved by his plea, but more moved by the plight of Haradoun’s people and the citizens of Gondor who had been trying to rebuild Emyn Muil. The Emperor told us that he believed the Blood Drinkers had spread outward from a central Nest. He said legend held that such creatures dwelt in the Dhak-Dir Mountain that surrounded the valley kingdom of Rhunballa. He told us that the people of Rhunballa were witches who had enslaved the Dhak-Dir long ago, and were feared by even the Easterling tribes of the Rhun Sea. Haradoun seemed to think that, as with many things in the Dark Lord’s former realm, the balance of power in Rhunballa had been upset by Sauron’s fall. That the witches no longer controlled their former pets. Without the implicit threat of Mordor keeping the Blood Drinkers in check, they were now out of control, spreading like vermin whose natural predators have departed."

"The Queen of Gondor believed there was some truth in this wild tale," Gimli said. "Her father was an ancient and learned Elf Lord, and had written in his books of lore and history that rumor had persisted for millennia of something terrible---a surviving horror of the First Age---that dwelt in the red mountains south of the Rhun Sea."

"And so," Indassa asked coolly, "You joined my noble husband on his brave quest to rid the world of the Nighthunters?"

Eowyn watched her closely, seeing signs she knew well after two years of judging the girl’s moods and reactions. Indassa had become a consummate actress, skilled in hiding her thoughts from her ministers with little or no effort. But beneath that controlled surface, the Queen was coiled like a spring wound too tight, ready to snap any second.

"No, Highness," Hurin replied. "Haradoun led a force of a thousand men to learn the truth of Rhunballa. Elessar matched that number. In addition, at Haradoun’s request, he sent two of his most trusted advisors along, so that Elessar might believe the report of what was found there without hesitation.

If we did indeed find what we sought, the word of Lord Gimli and the Prince of Mirkwood would be enough to convince Elessar to send aid to the East to help exterminate the Blood Drinkers."

"In plainest truth, Highness," Gimli added, "I think Aragorn smelled a rat. He’s a great one for spotting lies and half-truths. But he also knew that the main Nest---wherever it lay---must be routed out."

"Aye," agreed Hurin. His stern gray eyes bored into Indassa’s. "There was some truth to what he told us. This dawn did not come an instant too soon for myself and my men."

"We have always known what haunts the mountains," Indassa said. She tilted her chin upwards, refusing to flinch under that piercing accusatory stare. "You may liken us to a house that stands in a city of bandits and slavers. A housed ringed with a mote infested with water vipers. It is not what we would wish for in a perfect world, but the ‘vipers’ have kept this valley free of enslavement to Mordor for centuries."

Hurin regarded her steadily with the closed face of a long-time soldier who knows the sound of a lie by omission when he hears one. Indassa began to look as though she was fighting not to squirm under that steel-colored gaze.

"Was Haradoun with you?" The Queen finally asked into the heavy silence of the Hall.

"He was, Highness," Hurin said. "He led the way into the Pass. We were a merry band of fools, thinking ourselves safe because the sun had begun to rise on the south side of the mountains. He was one of the first to be taken. I saw them tear him from his saddle before he could even draw his scimitar."

The Queen drew in a little gasp of breath, laying one hand against her chest as though her heart pained her. She sat frozen for a moment, suspended in limbo between realization and reaction. Then she began to wail like a broken-hearted child.

Eowyn was one her feet, gathering up the sobbing girl in her arms. Gimli and Lord Hurin gazed on with that uncomprehending, helpless dismay kind-hearted men always display in the face of unheralded female hysterics.

"He is gone! He is gone!" Indassa sobbed, repeating the words like a prayer. "Oh, Eowyn, he is dead! I am free of him! He is dead!"

"My Lord," Gimli’s gruff voice said quietly. "Let us withdraw a bit. If I am not mistaken, this interview of over for the moment."

Eowyn gave them a small, thankful nod over the top of Indassa’s head.

It took a long time to coax the girl up from her throne of silken cushions and into her own chambers. After a solid hour of heart-rending tears, the little Queen collapsed into the spent silence of exhaustion.

"It is not over," Indassa whispered tonelessly as Eowyn tucked her into bed. "The---the Hunters stopped him, but---but you said they attacked the Watch. Eowyn---what will happed tonight?"

"I do not know," Eowyn said. Her heart was rent in half for the girl’s pain, but there were a hundred things that needed doing and not enough daylight left. It was already high noon. "We should prepare for the worst," she told Indassa. "If they decide to attack the city outright---" She closed her eyes against the tension headache building there. She tried to see any plan of defense where the people of Rhunballa might emerge victorious if the Hunters attacked in force. The harrowing images of the slaughter at the South Pass, the monstrous, inhuman strength she had felt as she hung helpless in Morsul’s arms, the speed with which to creatures had moved---

"I commanded the Watch to move every living soul to the shelter of the city," she told the Queen. "Ikako is seeing to it, but I must go and help her. We exhausted all of Fallah’s store of fire weapons last night and she cannot build more in half a day. I would ask you as Queen’s Guard to come to allow me to escort you to the Watch House this evening before dusk. We can better protect you there that at the Royal Villa." She smiled grimly, brushing the disarraying black curls from Indassa’s face. She had seen something they feared last night. Something that burned them with nothing more than a flickering touch of its silvery light. She held onto the image of the shimmering orb Legolas had used to shield the survivors of last night’s massacre. It was her one solid hope at this point. "We are not without weapons against their darkness, Highness." She had to speak to Gimli immediately.

"Protect my people," Indassa sighed, a breath away from sleep. "Do whatever you must."

"On my life, I swear it," Eowyn whispered.

"---lowborn grand-daughter of a Sabadi goat herd!" Obari the Wineseller’s wife was spitting viscously into Suni’s face. "Do not think that being a royal by-blow’s brat gives you any special license with me! You will not bar me from my queen!"

"No one may enter the Queen’s household for the duration of this emergency with the express leave of the Captain of the Watch," Suni said in a bored tone that did not match the smug half-smile on her lips.

Eowyn caught sight of Gimli and Lord Hurin standing a little aside from the scene on the front steps of the Royal Villa. Obari and Sharadi had gathered a crown of nearly a hundred. Eowyn was a little relived. They were influential, well-respected women. The little mob might have been much larger. There were not quite enough of them to brave an outright assault on the guard set about Indassa’s Villa.

"You!" Obari snarled, rounding on Eowyn as she saw her approaching.
"This is your fault, you barbarian trull! You commanded your ‘soldiers’ to turn those---those fire arrows upon the Hunters. Now, we will be lucky if we are not gutted in our beds this night!"

"They killed the Haradrim as they came through the Pass," Eowyn told them in a carrying voice. "Then they began to kill the Watch as well---your daughters and sisters." She fixed a cold eye upon the Wineseller’s wife. "If we had not fired the instant we did, they would have torn your firstborn to pieces."

Obari paled, whether with concern for Shaeri or rage at having her daughter’s allegiance to the Watch publicly proclaimed Eowyn could not tell. But the angry babble of voices dropped to a frightened murmur.

"And Haradoun?" A woman in the crowd asked.

"Haradoun is dead," Eowyn said simply.

A little cheer went up, though it was far from whole-hearted. The threat of Haradoun was far less frightening than an end to peaceful relations with the Hunters.

"We do not know what will happen tonight," Eowyn told them. "But those of you with large estates, prepare yourselves and your households to receive many visitors. Upon the authority of the Queen, we are withdrawing every croft and farmstead to the confines of the city. They will need to be quartered for the duration."

"We have only your word on that," Sharadi said mulishly. "Indassa must make a public statement, or failing that, she must at least receive her ministers." Mutters of agreement rippled through the crowd.

"She did not sleep this last night waiting for word from the South Pass," Eowyn told them. "She was understandably distraught when she learned all that happened there. Give her two hours of rest, my ladies. Then I will open her doors to you." She eyes Obari, her gaze hard and implacable. "I am sure you do not wish to have contention among our own while it still remains to be seen whether we are now at open war with the Hunters. That would be a very dangerous thing to do."

The older woman stalked up the stairs, uncowed by the warning in Eowyn’s words. "You dare the threaten me, you---"

"I warn you," Eowyn said softly, her voice a harsh whisper. "I am Captain of the Watch and Rhunballa is in a state of emergency. I you hamstring the defense of the Queen or people of this land I will lock you in the gaol until all is done." The Wineseller’s wife drew breath to utter an ear-splitting screech, but Eowyn cut her off short. "Do not force me to shame you in front of all these people, Obari," she told the red-faced woman. She edged closer, speaking too softly to be heard by anyone other that the enraged woman before her. "Everyone you have ever known will be in mortal danger come sunset---"

"Because of your failure to---!"

"Help me help you people!" Eowyn said. "Blame me for everything when there is time for such luxuries. I beg you, Obari! Help me! We must work as one if we are to survive this!"

Obari’s lined, tension-ridden face was still a tight mask of suppressed rage, but the word ‘beg’ seemed to have mollified her pride in some small way. She was silent a long moment. "Two hours," she agreed. "I will wait not an instant longer to my Queen. And you will not quarter so much as a single filthy farmer’s brat in my house until I hear the command from Indassa’s own lips!" She whirled in a flurry of verdant silks and pushed her way rudely through the press of her own supporters, swatting them out of her way with sharp, angry little slaps.

"What a miserable, selfish woman," Eowyn muttered under her breath as the crowd began to dissipate.

"Cold-hearted beast," Suni said in disgust. "She did not even ask about her own child’s wounds."

Eowyn cocked an eye at her. "What did she mean by royal by-blow?"

The tall, coppery-skinned archer seemed amused. "It is common knowledge. You should listen to gossip more readily. My father was a Sabadi goatherd. My mother was the child of old King Udam in his youth by a farm girl from South Springs."

"Then you are Indassa’s---niece?"

Suni shook her head, eyeing Eowyn fondly. "No, my naïve sister. I am Commander of Bent Bow Watch House and Indassa’s faithful servant."

Of course, Eowyn thought sadly, had Udam’s illegitimate child been a boy, the King might have acknowledged him proudly. But a bastard girl-child was of no worth at all in the East. "Stand guard another two hours," Eowyn told her. "I will return before that time to rouse Indassa. Send a runner to me at Queen’s Guard Watch House is another crowd forms."

"Beware," Suni said solemnly. "My two little ones are already in the commons hall. You may come upon the Watch House to find a smoking ruin if they have been left unattended for long." Eowyn stifled an answering grin.

She turned back to find Gimli and Hurin watching her with great interest.

"I am sorry---" She began.

"Nay, my Lady," Hurin shook his head graciously. "Do not apologize when matters of state beckon. Lord Gimli and I have spoken and we are in accord here."

"Aye, Lass," Gimli said. "Give us a task to help secure this city."

"Gladly," she said with feeling. "Come with me, my Lords. Queen’s Guard House is just across the square."

Eowyn shielded her eyes as they followed her across the Fountain Square. It was already an hour past midday.

"We have less than seven hours of daylight left," Gimli said, speaking her thoughts aloud.

Queen’s Guard Watch House had begun life as a bakery, the largest in the city. The outer commons hall still bore the comforting phantom smell of fresh bread at times. The commons was strangely empty for being an hour past midday. Except for Suni’s two little sons, mercifully asleep for their afternoon nap in one of the main barracks cots, the House was all but deserted. Eowyn had charged every House commander with bringing in their own territory, sending them racing to the four points of the map before their horses had even cooled down after the long ride back from the South Pass.

She led them thought the inner barracks where Fallah and Rumashi midwife, had set up a recovery ward for the Watch, the wounded soldiers of Gondor and the Haradrim who were too injured for the gaol. Mothers and children of Watch members were hovering over their loved ones, and less anxious relatives were waiting upon the men of Gondor and Harad.

As they passed, a dozen separate conversations broke down into curious murmurs of little gasps from those who were seeing Gimli for the first time. The Rhunballani rarely saw foreigners, let along foreigners who were not of the race of Man. The stares were not frightened or hostile, but there was a sharp interest, an avid curiosity that folk usually reserved for travelling mummers. That reaction had been Eowyn’s chief concern when she had ordered Legolas placed in her rooms instead of the main barracks with the other wounded. They entered Eowyn’s bedchamber to find Fallah nodding off in the uncomfortable, high-backed chair beside the bed.

Fallah started awake as Eowyn touched her lightly on the arm. Eowyn saw that her friend’s eye were red with weeping. Fallah had spent every ounce of her strength and skill to keep the wounded alive on the trip back from the South Pass. Not a single man or woman who had left the Pass alive had died today because of her. But the knowledge of what her hands had wrought, the memory of that smoking pile of dismembered human remains, must be eating a hole in her physician’s heart.

"How is he?" Eowyn asked in a hushed voice.

"Better," Fallah said tiredly. She gazed over at her sleeping patient, frowning muzzily. "Unnaturally so. He heals too fast."

"He is not a Man, Fallah," Eowyn said.

Gimli had moved to stand beside Eowyn, his face an etched mold of worry as he gazed down at the Elf’s pale face. Legolas was lying face down beneath a cotton bed sheet that covered a weight of burn salve compresses. The wound the arrow of Bent Bow Watch House had torn in his right thigh was clean and bandaged. Fallah stood, and observing the faces of Gimli and Eowyn, lifted the edge of the compress on the Elf’s back. She groped about on the bedside table for her spectacles before she realized they were atop her head.

"Look," Fallah said. "This is just short of miraculous to my mind. There are too places on his back that were true deep flesh burns. The rest is just nasty blistering. But the redness and swelling are already subsiding. He may very well walk away from this without a scar to show for his hurts. The arrow wound was the worst of it."

Gimli chuckled. "I’ll wager he’ll tell you having his hair burnt off is the worst of it! He’ll be in a state of mourning when he wakes to find he’s lost most of it!"

Eowyn stared down at the angry, red blisters that marred to pale, perfect skin of the Elf’s bare back, feeling a lump of terrible guilt rise up and seize her throat shut. "You and he befriended me when I was in desperate need of friends," she told the Dwarf in a small voice. "And I have repaid your kindness in your own blood---"

"Hush that nonsense this moment, girl!" Gimli said sternly. "You don’t deserve the blame for this, and even if you did, you don’t have time to wallow in it!"

She blinked at him in surprise.

"I think," he said, "between what you’ve told us and things your little Queen let slip, that we have a pretty fair picture of what happened. And where the blame lies."

"Haradoun’s treachery was aptly rewarded, at least," Hurin said grimly.

"Haradoun is dead?" Fallah asked, a tiny exhausted smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.

"Lord Hurin saw them take him," Eowyn said. She turned her eyes from Legolas’ too-pale face, back to Gimli. She saw Fallah’s neat stitchwork across his brow where the gash had been. "My Lords, it is very possible we will be under siege come dusk. I would not say these words in the hearing of any save Fallah, but our chances are slim to none if we fight them with sword and bow. Fallah—"

"I know what you would ask, my friend," Fallah said, wiping the sleep from her strained eyes. "I will go to my shop and take inventory of all my supplies there. Though our ‘armory’ was all but exhausted in last night’s battle. I will see what manner of incendiaries I can conjure with what is left.

Tell Rumashi to change the salve compresses of those who are burned every three hours. I will be back two hours before sunset." She left quietly, meeting Hurin’s eyes briefly as she passed. "For what my hands have wrought, I owe you a debt of blood, my Lord," she said softly. "Trust that I will repay it if we live through this."

Hurin’s steel gray eyes followed her as she departed. "That," he said slowly, "is possibly the most dangerous woman I have ever met. Those fire weapons---" He shuddered. "Eru! If such a thing ever fell into the hands of an evil man---"

"It was my idea," Eowyn said heavily. "I thought her skylighters---if enlarged and strengthened---would make fine kindling of the Hunters. We have been conspiring, she and I, to fashion a kind of armory that would wipe them out altogether." She shook away the drowning sense of guilt. She could flay herself alive later. As Gimli had said, there was no time for such things now.

"Master Gimli," she said, sinking down into the bedside chair Fallah had deserted. "Legolas had a crystal sphere of light in his hand when you rode out of the Pass. It was what shielded you and the soldiers of Gondor from the Hunters."

"Aye," Gimli nodded. "Those fell things that came too close to the light it emitted in their presence caught fire as though they had been doused with hot oil." Slowly, almost reverently, he withdrew the orb from the leather pouch at his waist. It looked like a simple glass ball, hewn into a perfect sphere. It was about the size of a man’s fist.

"What is it?" Eowyn asked. "Is it some holy Elvish thing?"

"I think so," Gimli replied. "The Queen gave it to Legolas when we took our leave of Minas Tirith. Arwen had great misgivings about this little fact-finding mission of ours. She is the daughter of Elrond of Rivendell and also the granddaughter of the Lady Galadriel of Lothlorien. She had a touch of their foresight still, even though she is now mortal. She had a terrible feeling of foreboding about our safety. She said this would ward off certain kinds of unnatural evil."

Eowyn touched the flawless crystal thing, lifting it in one hand. As she did so, it divided in half, opening on invisible hinges like a clamshell. The interior was hollow, a perfect answering sphere within. She shook her head, feeling a sinking swell of hopelessness wash over her again.

"It is miraculous," she said, rubbing at her temples. Her head was pounding. "But it is not enough. Even on open ground, it shielded less than a hundred men. There are more than ten thousand women and children in this valley. You saw how fast the Hunters moved, how strong they are. They will fall upon us tonight and---"

"Break it."

The music of his voice was weak and laced with pain. Eowyn stared into the inhuman brilliance of Legolas’ dark gray eyes. He lay on his stomach, his face turned toward her, his eyes open and aware. She leaned forward, hearing Gimli’s happy, relieved chuckle at her shoulder. An instant later the Dwarf began to berate his friends furiously for a careless fool. Eowyn found herself smiling as Legolas endured the tongue-lashing patiently. Four years had done nothing to dim the sweet radiance of the Elf’s smile and she suddenly felt hope where there had only been swelling despair. Gods, it was good to see the two of them again, whatever the circumstances!

"I am glad you are awake," she told him. She could think of nothing else to say.

"I am glad to see you again," he said. "I have wondered often over the last years if you were well, my Lady. I have prayed that you found happiness."

"A measure of it," she replied with a small answering smile. "You said to break it," she asked intently. "Will that not destroy its power?"

"No," he said softly. "It belonged to Elwing of Doriath. It was wrought by Earendil as a kind of jewel case for the Silmaril that was Luthien Tinuviel’s bride price, long and long ago. Arwen, the Queen of Gondor, is Elwing’s granddaughter. She said the crystal must have absorbed some of the light and power of the Silmaril it housed for many a year. Every ounce of it is suffused with power. Arwen said it would be needed to safeguard the lives of many innocents. Break it, Eowyn, into as many small pieces as you may. You may use the shards to shelter every house in this city."

She wondered how he knew where he was and the exact nature of their peril. Perhaps Elves never completely lost consciousness, remaining on some level aware of their surroundings even when sorely hurt. She did not ask. She only watched as Gimli withdrew a hand sized hammer from his belt, his mouth pulled into a frown as every Dwarvish instinct in his body rebelled against destroying so beautiful and precious a thing.

He struck true, shattering the orb into a thousand pieces.

Obari was fit to be tied when Indassa upheld Eowyn’s decision to commandeer all of the largest villas in the city for the vale farmers and shepherds who continued to stream into Rhunballa City throughout the blessedly long afternoon. All that long day, Eowyn sent up repeated thanks to the Valar that it was the week of Mid Summer, the longest days of the year.

The Watch quartered the majority of these people in the great dining halls of the wealthy, places where they would be confined, cramped too tightly into a single space for sleep. This made for generalized grousing among guests and hostesses alike, but the halls were safest. They were large indoor areas where the light of the crystal shards could be contained without having to bend around corners.

Indassa threw open the doors of the Royal Villa to the people, emerging from her rooms composed, calm and every inch the strong monarch her people needed to see at the moment. Eowyn open the commons halls of the city’s five Watch Houses to the refugees. And still the overflow numbered in the thousands. Shaeri opened the doors of the wineries, much to her mother’s dismay, crowding hundreds into the storehouses and grape presses. The bakeries, the dyers, the laundries and the smithhouse did the same. Three hours before sunset, when it became apparent that every large building in the city was full, the common people stepped forward and began to offer the hospitality of their homes to the stragglers.

Into every standing structure that housed a living soul, Eowyn sent a soldier of the Watch with a shard of Elwing’s orb. An hour before dusk, Eowyn arrived at the Royal Villa to escort Indassa to Queen’s Guard Watch House. Earlier in the day, Obari and Sharadi might have throw apoplectic fits over this, but with the shadows lengthening, the bluster of the Councilwomen had turned to real fear. The Watch Houses would every bit the target the Royal Villa was, but at the least Queen’s Guard was fortified.

Night fell upon Rhunballa with the warm, peaceful laziness of summer. Every living soul in the city held its breath, each praying to their own gods. In the center of the commons hall of Queen’s Guard, Suni stood straight and watchful, a shard of Elwing’s orb held aloft in either hand.

And nothing happened.

By midnight, Eowyn strode through the crowded Watch House, marveling at the at the human capacity to adapt to any situation. The first hour after sunset, the commons hall had been silent as a tomb. Fear had been a thick and tangible thing. Mothers held their children tightly, the Watch had stood, swords drawn and torches blazing. After some thought, Eowyn had released the dozen surviving Haradrim from the gaol, informing them bluntly that their Emperor was dead. She had offered them the choice of defending Rhunballa from the shelter of the Watch House or taking their chances outside. Not surprisingly, they had been very eager to wield their scimitars in the service of Indassa.

"It is only fitting, after all," the young chieftain’s son, Moussah, had told her. "The Lady Indassa is first wife to our Emperor. We owe her our allegiance in her lord’s absence." Moussah could not quite bring himself to believe that Haradoun was dead.

For an hour, they all stood shoulder to shoulder---Rhunballani, Haradrim and soldiers of Gondor---keeping vigil in the deafening silence.

"Even the babes do not cry," Moussah had said in hushed tones to Marsil of Gondor. Marsil had only nodded, his Numenorian gray eyes pale with fear.

But the one merciful thing about jaw-breaking tension was that it could not sustain itself for very long. After nearly two hours of nothing, the smaller children began to fret and fuss to be allowed to play. Quiet conversations began here and there. Brock the Miller, formerly of Laketown, struck up a game of dice with Somal and some wounded soldiers of Gondor. Though far from a party atmosphere, the general hub of voices now sounded more like village folk gathered in their lord’s hall to weather a hard storm than a siege.

"This is better than the other," Hurin told her quietly. He, like Eowyn, had not relaxed or dropping his guard. "Let them turn their minds away from the danger as much as they may. As long as we stand alert they are as safe as they can be."

Eowyn nodded absently. By the commons’ great stone fireplace, Shaeri was once more telling the story of how the Hunter had swept her up into the air only to be burned to ash by Fallah’s rocket. The Wineseller’s daughter had her splinted leg propped up in the lap of a bandaged Gondorian soldier. Her younger sister Insis sat beside her, batting her eyes at a young warrior of Harad. Shaeri had been given in marriage at fifteen to an ill-tempered domineering man thrice her age. She had wept few tears two years later to find herself a widow. In the last four years, she had learned to revel in her newfound freedom. And to revel in handsome young men.

"Saa!" Suni swore as she handed off the two Shards to Ikako, relinquishing her watch to the weapons’ smith. "That one has used up her allotted share of luck for the next ten years."

"Her cat will surely die," Ikako agreed in her dry way. "For she has stolen all of its lives."

On one of the larger cushions beside the fire, Fallah lay profoundly asleep, snoring softly. She had come to Eowyn the a terrible scenario that envisioned the entire city of Rhunballa burned to the ground if they were to be so foolish as to try using skylighters or any of Fallah’s burning weapons with closed doors. She had spent the latter half of the day building new fire rockets, laying by in store for later.

"You’ve yet to learn one of the most valuable skills of warfare, Lass," Gimli told her as she approached him. He stood at the back end of the hall, in the arch of the main barracks door. The Dwarf seemed completely as his ease. He leaned casually upon his axe handle as though it was a walking stick.

"What is that?" Eowyn asked him, her eyes running across the beams of the commons ceiling, picturing clawed hands tearing them away, dark forms bearing away the well-loved faces in this room.

"To relax until the hour is upon you," he said.

She gazed down into his smiling, bearded face and felt a surge of warm joy in the simple fact of his presence. She felt a sudden urge to kiss his cheek.

"Eowyn!" Indassa appeared through the arch of the barracks doors, flanked by two soldiers of the Watch. Her deep olive complexion was a rosy shade of pink. The commons was brimming with people, but the barracks was so crowded one had to step over sleeping bodies to get from here to there. Had Indassa been visiting the wounded there?

"Well, little Highness?" Gimli cocked an eye at Indassa’s blushing face. "Was he all you imagined?"

"I talked to the Elf Prince, Eowyn!" Indassa told her excitedly. "Master Gimli said I might visit with him a few moments. Master Gimli has told me all about his people in the Iron Hills, but I wanted to see the Elf as well." She sighed. "Oh, he is wondrous fair! Morsul is like a ruined shadow compared to a true Elf. He was kind as well, and told me I was very strong and courageous to have led my people from such a young age."

Gimli let himself be dragged away by Suni’s two little sons and several other small children, all of them clamoring to hear more tales of heroic Halflings. Eowyn listened to the Queen continue to babble, extolling the virtues of Legolas, as she guided Indassa to a little sleeping pallet she had set up in the west corner of the hall. In twenty minutes of speech with the Elf, Indassa had developed a crush---a real, full-blown, giggling girl’s crush. And in spite of everything, Eowyn’s heart sang. Indassa’s reaction to Legolas was not that of a woman of nineteen. It was the fluttery sighing of a fourteen-year-old girl. The fourteen-year-old maid Indassa had been before Haradoun’s arrival in Rhunballa. This sudden infatuation was the first shred of interest Indassa had shown in any man in four years, and it spoke more of true healing than a thousand eloquent words. Perhaps now that Haradoun was dead, Indassa could live again.

Eowyn arranged the light cover over Indassa, tucking the girl into the makeshift bed amid the Queen’s feeble protests. "I should stay awake for my people," she said plaintively.

"Your people are falling asleep around you, my Queen," Eowyn told her. "Lie here a bit and rest your eyes. We will keep watch."

Indassa nodded, yawning hugely. "Poppa told me that the Men of Gondor and the North were so white-skinned because they bred with non-human creatures such as Elves. Do you have any Elf blood, Eowyn?"

"Perhaps a drop or two," Eowyn said. "My grandmother was a noblewoman of Gondor."

"Hmm," Indassa mused. "I always wondered how a woman---even a Westron---could take such a creature to her bed. But I think---I think I should like to kiss him."

Eowyn laughed softly, trying to picture the look on Legolas’ face if Indassa were to make such a request of him.

"He is fair and kind," the Queen sighed sleepily. "And he does not scare me…."

Ewoyn tucked the coverlet in at the sleeping girl’s chin. "Sleep well, little sister," she whispered. "And dream of sweet kisses from Elvish Princes."

Eowyn left the Queen asleep with two women of the Watch attending her. A measure of the noise level in the hall waned as mothers put children down for the night. The Watch and the motley assortment of foreign soldiers remained wakeful and alert. Not attack came as the hours pushed past midnight and toward the dawn.

"Perhaps they are not angry with us," a woman’s hushed voice suggested tentatively.

Or perhaps, Eowyn thought, they could sense the power of the Shards of Elwing’s orb and were simply biding their time. Perhaps they would wait weeks, or even months, to have their revenge. Until most of the folk had breathed a collective sigh of relief. Until the Queen’s Council began to stir up dissatisfaction in the people born of the strain of sleeping ten to a bed in the homes and halls of strangers. Until no one believed there was any danger at all.

"Do not dare to ask her that to her face!" Shaeri told her younger sister, glancing over at Eowyn guiltily.

"Ask me what?" Eowyn said suspiciously, stopping before the hearth where both young women had gathered a little court of admirers about them.

Shaeri tossed her head of black curls and gazed irritably at her sister. "Amrod here," Shaeri gestured to the Gondorian soldier she was using as a foot rest, "says that you are a queen in your own lands, and that you slew the Lord of the Nazgul in single combat at the Battle of Pellennor Fields."

Eowyn sighed. "I am not a queen. And I did slay the Witchking, but I was not alone. Another warrior fought at my side and I would have fallen had he not hamstrung the Nazgul an instant before I struck."

"Aye!" Amrod said. "That was one of the Halflings princes I spoke of."

"And Udin says," Insis said, frowning defiantly at her elder sister, her hand upon the arm of the beardless Haradrim youth at her side, "that you were the lover of King Elessar and fled his lands when he wed his Elf Queen. Amrod says they say the same in Gondor."

"What?!" Eowyn screeched. Heads turned at the sound of her raised voice, and both Insis and Udin flinched visibly. She stalked away, feeling as though every eye in the hall was fastened on her, not trusting herself to answer. Her face, she knew, would be blazing red. She passed Gimli, who regarded her with raised eyebrows. She beat of cowardly retreat from the commons, and back through the barracks, telling herself she was not fleeing.

She gave a cursory nod to Sokorra of Bent Bow Watch House, who stood in the center of the barracks room, Shard held aloft in one hand. It had been necessary to place at least one Shard in every large room where people were gathered together. Gimli had left a solitary Shard lying on the study table of Eowyn’s bedchamber to guard Legolas as he slept.

She shut the door to her rooms as gently as her mood would allow. Outside, through the slats of her barricaded bedchamber window, the heavy pall of complete darkness had brightened. It was perhaps half an hour until true dawn. Eowyn gave Legolas sleeping form a brief glance. His eyes were still shut, a sign of deep healing sleep in his kind, Gimli had said. She sat in her bedside armchair, fuming silently, her stomach in knots. She rummaged in her little study’s top drawers for her journal, hunting for an unbroken plume. One of her earliest tutors had caned her knuckles to break her of the habit of bearing down so hard she snapped a feather at nearly every lesson of penmanship. She smiled. Eomer, thirteen at the time, and tall as a man, had thrashed the tutor when he learned of this. She rooted around fruitlessly in the drawer another moment or two before concluding she was far too agitated to write a coherent thought.

When she glanced back at the bed, Legolas eyes were open, regarding her with gentle curiosity.

"What is wrong?" He asked softly.

"Aside from the obvious?" She laughed unevenly.

He smiled faintly. "Aside from that."

She realized she was gripping both the armrests of her chair so tightly her knuckles were white. She made a face with effort, trying to relax. Until the hour is upon you, Gimli had said. "It is nearly dawn," she said. "The Hunters did not come. I think---I think they will not come tomorrow, or the next night. Perhaps not for weeks."

"And yet, eventually, they will come," he murmured. "You are right, I think. Great patience is a constant among immortals. They will wait until the folk have returned to their own homes. Even if we safeguard every household in this valley with a Shard, eventually the people of this land will become complacent."

"I know what must be done now," she said. "Fallah and I have been quietly preparing for it for months. She will need ten days, she estimates, with the help of as many people as we can find with the proper set of skills, to fashion all that I have asked of her. But the Rhunballani cut their teeth sleeping cheek and jowl with these beasts, Legolas. In a week, they will begin to rebel against the command to quarter and be quartered. I do not know if I can hold this martial law together long enough to build the weapons we need. I do not know if I can lead my friends, my sisters, to the Crags, knowing that many of them will not survive a direct assault on the Nests of the Hunters. I do not know---" She buried her face in her hands. "I do not know if I can save these people whom I love as though they were my own kin!"

He did not answer for a moment. "You and Aragorn might almost be brother and sister." She raised her head, her face a picture of tired confusion. She had no mental strength left for Elvish riddles. "You need not rest the weight of the world on your back alone," he said. "Others may help you shoulder it."

"Yes," she agreed softly. She frowned. "I have an improper and unladylike question of ask of you."

"Ask," he said.

"Does all of Gondor whisper that I was Aragorn’s lover while he was in Rohan?"

Legolas shifted a bit on his stomach and winced, regretting that small movement. "I am growing tired already of lying on my face. I wish I could sit. Mistress Fallah tells me I shall find sitting quite uncomfortable for some time yet." He stilled and seemed to sigh. "Men often accuse women of being gossipmongers and rumor-bearers. I sometimes think it is to take attention away from their own failing in that arena."

"So, it is true," she said tightly.

"It may have begun as a romantic notion of the warriors of Rohan, who observed the friendship between you and Aragorn and assumed their beloved Lady had captured the heart of Isuldur’s heir. Loving you as they do, how could they imagine that he could do less. Your tale, my Lady, became the stuff of which legends are spun when you slew Angmar. From such fame, every aspect of your tale grew taller with each new retelling. And when you vanished without a trace and Estel wed another---"

"It is a dirty lie!" She said harshly. "Aragorn would never have betrayed his beloved. And I could not have---" She clamped her mouth shut.

"It is a lie," he agreed without heat. "But is it not such a tale as you have read in the histories of Beleriand. Brave deeds, tragic love, and the hero---or heroine---who vanished into the mists after winning the day?"

Eowyn only glowered at him.

"Though personally," he went on thoughtfully, "I think the tale-spinners leave off at the most interesting part of the story. I would find the heroic maid’s travels after the Great War a better tale. ‘The Shieldmaiden of Rohan’s Adventures in Middle Earth.’ If Bilbo Baggins were still with us, he would find that a wonderful title for a book!"

Eowyn snorted indelicately. "I traveled north," she told him. "To the sunless lands of Forodwaith, all the way to the ice that does not melt."

"Ah!" He said, his eyes glowing with interest. "The sons of Elrond have been there, though I know of no one else who has. They told me the Sun does not find those lands six months of the years."

Eowyn smiled, thinking back. "The Men there are tall, yellow and red haired like the Rohirrim, though their features are different, heavier. They are a wild folk almost. On Mid Summer’s Eve, the Sun does not set until midnight and they have many festivals. But in the dead of winter, the nights are eighteen hours long and, thus, many a fell thing has made its home in their lands. The women fight beside their men, relying on them for protection only while they are carrying."

She grew silent, thinking of the faces of the men and women she had known in the village of Skovielsk. They lived every winter on the edge of annihilation. She wondered if they were even still alive. "I dwelt among them for a year before their high chieftain offered me his bed. When I refused, he told me he would put aside his wife and wed me. He was put out that I did not consider this a great honor. I left before my refusal of their lord caused trouble for my friends there. I skirted Mirkwood by the Eastern rode and wondered the Brown Lands. I shore my hair and traveled as a boy, riding with the Horseclans of the Eastern Steppe for a short time. But they believe that horses are made in the image of the gods. It is sacrilege among them that a woman or a slave should touch a horse. I journeyed south to the Sea of Rhun and took a contract from a foundering caravan of Laketown tradesmen to be their hired sword and protect them from Easterling bandits as the traveled to Rhunballa. That was two years ago. A smattering of all the peoples of the earth are gathered here in Rhunballa, I think. Knowing them as I do now, it is sad and terrible to me that we in the West lump them all together. We call them Easterlings and Southrons as though they were all one people, and we are taught that they were all faithful servants of Sauron. The truth of the matter is that Mordor enslaved nine-tenths of Middle Earth and we did not know it. Somala, the land of Fallah and Somal’s fathers, is a thousand leagues south of Gondor. They were conquered five generations ago and kept their learning, their mathematics and science, by passing it down orally, parent to child. Ikako’s grandfather came from a land called Nihon, a land so far east it is called the Cradle of the Sun. He passed down to her father, and so to her, the skill of folding the steel of a sword in such a way that it is as strong and light as pure mithril. The West, Legolas, was the last tiny sliver of lands and people Sauron failed to conquer. Some Men, the Haradrim and the tribes of Khand, served him willingly, worshipping him as their god. But most did not. I look back on the Battle of Pellennor now and I wonder how many of the Men we slew that day were forcibly conscripted like the Men of Rhunballa. The world of Men---Middle Earth itself---is so much wider and wonderfully varied than I imagined as a girl. And most of it is people by good folk."

"I wish I could see it all," he said. She glanced at him, wondering why he sounded so sorrowful.

"There is time to do so," she said. One corner of her mouth turned up. "It is not as though you are getting any older."

"Time can run short of need and want," he replied, soft as a mourning dirge. "Even for immortals." He seemed to shake himself, though he did not move a muscle. He eyed her searchingly. She had to fight not to squirm under that piercing, too-keen gaze. She wondered if he banked the full force of his Elvish gaze at times, turning it upon those around him only when he was as intently curious as he seemed now. "Time is such as odd thing when dealing with mortals. Eighty years ago, on a visit to Rivendell, I met a mortal child named Estel. He shot me with a toy sling as I rode into the vale and told me he was guardian of these lands. That I must declare myself and my errand or he would thrash me insensible."

"What a horrible brat," she said.

He laughed aloud. "Aye, he was that. I spent the summer teaching him to use a bow instead of a sling. He had no natural skill for archery whatsoever. I left Rivendell in the fall of that year, and after what only seemed to me a season or three, I met with Estel again. His true name was Aragorn, I learned, and he was traveling with his kinsmen, the Dunedain. Twenty years had passed in the blink of an eye and it seemed to me that little Estel had grown from boy to man while a glanced way. You were a woman in years when I knew you in Rohan, but in many ways, you have grown and changed as much as Aragorn did in the those two short decades. It never fails to astound me how swiftly your folk change."

She could think of no reply to that, simple mortal girl that she was. So, instead, she asked, "Is my brother well?"

"He is well," Legolas said. "He web this last year with the daughter of the Prince of Dol Amroth. You will soon be an aunt."

She smiled tentatively, picturing her brother’s face.

"He grieves for you as for one who is lost forever," Legolas told her softly. "As do all you people."

She closed her stinging eyes, nodding.

"One day," he said. "When you are ready, you should journey homeward to make amends. When Gimli and I depart, I will bear letters to Eomer and others if you wish." He paused, as though considering whether to speak or not. "The Lord Faramir is well, also. Though, unlike your brother, he remains unwed." And again, she felt her face burning under that all-seeing Elvish gaze. "He and I spoke of you not long ago," Legolas told her. "He said he dreams of you sometimes. In his visions you are happy and free."

She smiled sadly.

"And Aragorn?"

"He is a new father," Legolas grinned. "The boy takes after his sire in looks, poor little thing."

"That is good," she sighed. She wished for Aragorn all the happiness and joy in the world. She eyed him critically after a moment’s thought. "How soon will you be healed of your hurts? Can you tell? Even Gimli says he does not know. He says he has never seen you so much as nicked in battle."

"A week," he said. "Perhaps more. I am sleeping the deep healing sleep. It is excelerating the speed of my recovery."

"Are you---?" She leaned forward, fascinated. "Are you willing this healing sleep upon yourself?" She knew next to nothing of Elves, she realized, other than the histories she had read of the First and Second Ages. And those tales read like myth in many ways.

He smiled in answer. "I am useless to you as I am now."

She shook her head. "Never that."

"Sleep," he told her. His own eyes were already drooping. "I will do the same. Dawn is here."

She leaned back in her chair, resting her head, willing herself to let go of the coiled tension that was making every inch of her body ache after more than thirty-six full hours of wakefulness. She shifted restlessly, trying to get comfortable. The face of Morsul flitting briefly past her mind’s eye, his cold beauty bleeding into Grima’s sallow visage. "Bad dreams," she whispered, shivering, fighting the sleep that was tugging at her tired mind.

"I will sing them away if they come," he told her. He shifted the pillow beneath his head and murmured sleepily. "This pillow smells of flowers and sunshine. I do not recognize the bloom."

"Sinisi," she sighed. "It is blended into all the soaps."

"Sinisi," he repeated. "That is the floral scent." His breath was slowing. His eyes were closed. "But the sunshine, I think, is you…."

Something in her stomach fluttered unaccountably, sending warmth upward into her chest. She sighed once more and followed him down into good dreams.

A week passed. Time slowed to a ponderous trundle. On the afternoon of the seventh day, Eowyn arrived in her quarters to find Legolas had bathed and risen. He was standing unsteadily, half-dressed before her mirror, wearing only a pair of wide-breached Sabadi trousers. Fallah was gently stripping away the last of the bandages from his back. Gimli upon the black oak chest at the foot of her bed, anxious as a mother bird, ready to catch his friend should he fall.

"Gods of Light, your people are amazing folk!" Fallah said. She glanced back at Eowyn. "I do not think he will even scar from this!"

Legolas extended both arms at his sides and slowly brought them together before his chest. His breath caught in his throat as the still-tender skin on his back stretched with this movement. The flesh was still a bit red in places, but the deep blisters were gone. Healed as though they had never been.

"The salve I have you will ease the last of the discomfort," Fallah told him.

Eowyn moved to stand beside him as he pulled on the soft white cotton tunic Fallah handed him. He smiled at her in the mirror. "I will move into the outer barracks tonight and give you back the use of your rooms."

"She’ll have to boil the sheets to get out the smell of roasted Elf," Gimli grunted.

Legolas touched his hair, his smile fading a bit. Fallah had evened it up for him, but it now fell just above his chin. "I suppose there is no help for this," he said sadly.

"It will grow back in a year of three," Fallah said, seeing his mournful expression.

"Nay, Mistress," Legolas sighed. "You will be a grandmother before it grows to its former length."

"That is interesting!" Fallah’s almond eyes were suddenly sparkling with curiosity. "Tell me, how many years does it take one of your people to grow from babe to man?" She began rummaging around in her physician’s bag and found her book of notes. "You would not eat the stewed hare I gave you because it was a living thing. Is that custom among your folk or is meat physically disagreeable to you? And I noticed while treating you that you have no hair on your arms and legs, or---"

"Fallah!" Eowyn exclaimed plaintively. "He is not some new species of butterfly!"

"Oh!" Fallah closed her book with a snap. She looked mortified. "I am as bad as Shaeri in my own way! I am sorry!" But Legolas was laughing merrily.

"Shaeri?" Eowyn asked, frowning suspiciously.

"Daiyo!" Fallah said, her eyes narrowing. "I came from our little fireworks shop for an hour ago to check up on the wounded here. I found Shaeri, her sister and two other trollops from Deep Wells gathered around the bed, asking him if he would like help bathing?"

"Were they indeed?" Eowyn asked dangerously.

Legolas only continued chuckling. It was a curiously male sound. "The ladies of Gondor are more subtle," he told them. "They usually begin a conversation with an inquiry as to whether my skill as an archer is as great as tales say."

Gimli laughed aloud.

"They meant no harm," the Elf said, observing Eowyn’s baleful expression. "They were gracious when I gave them a variation of the little speech I use when I am in Minas Tirith. I told them Elves do not accept ‘baths’ from women unless they are first joined in wedlock."

"Pah!" Fallah said. "You were too kind to them!" But even she was fighting laughter now. "That will only earn you a slew of marriage proposals."

Eowyn was very glad the three of them had a sense of humor about the whole matter, for she had none. She made a mental note to assign Shaeri to guard her own mother’s villa tonight. An entire night spent trapped in her mother’s nagging, over-bearing company would be fitting punishment for creeping into Legolas’ sickroom and---and peeping at her while he lay hurt and unaware!

Another two days sped by in a never-ending fury of work and preparation. Eowyn had let Fallah hand pick her helpers in the little weapons smithy they had made of the great pressroom in Obari’s largest winery at the northern edge of the city. Most of those working there were either apothecaries or healers themselves, with some experience in combining and mixing delicate substances. Even so, Eowyn had decided to use the presshouse because it contained many metal cauldrons the shield the blast of any mishaps, and, more important, it did not lie in a residential neighborhood.

On the morning of the tenth day, after a private conversation with Indassa, Hurin, Legolas and Gimli the night before, Eowyn formally announced in open Council her intention to lead an assault upon the Nests of the Hunters in two days time.

The meeting did not go well.

All of Eowyn’s predictions about the slow landslide of political stability were proving true. The session degenerated into a shouting match even before Eowyn took the floor. Obari wanted Indassa to move back to the Royal Villa, or better, to her own villa. The older woman made a lengthy speech, making much of the fact that the Queen was still of tender years, and should not be subjected to the sullying influences of common rice farmers and foreign soldiers. Sharadi, no friend to Eowyn, but ever the hard-headed pragmatist, had cut her off in mid-oration. She had proclaimed bluntly that a slightly sullied Queen was infinitely preferable to a dead one.

In the wake of that spitting cat fight, Eowyn made her announcement to dead silence, carefully outlining the plan of attack. She surveyed the pale faces of these women with whom she would have never willing shared company, and felt a brief tug of sympathy at the fear she saw there. Surprisingly, it was Imshada the Laundress who finally voiced the question Eowyn dreaded.

"It is ten full days now and still they have not attacked," the heavy-set woman said. "I am beginning to worry that we court our own doom in this attack. It is by no means assured that an attack will come at all from the Crags. But if we dare to make open war upon them---"

And again, Sharadi surprised Eowyn. "What will you do if we all go back to our lives and they fall upon us in a month, or three months? Or next year?" The Treasurer’s Wife gave Eowyn a cold accusatory eye. "We have shed their blood, and blood, above all things, they do not forget. Or forgive. It is all or nothing now. Either we wipe them from the face of the earth or they will devour us, be it sooner or later."

"And when they are gone," another woman asked in despair. "What

then? Harad and the tribes of Khand will fall upon us like ravening wolves!"

"Not if Gondor extends its hand in alliance," Indassa said clearly.

Shocked silence greeted her words.

"The Lords of Gondor and I have spoken at length," the Queen told them slowly. "If Elessar agrees to a pact of friendship with Rhunballa, and his two ministers---Lord Gimli and Lord Legolas---seem certain he will, the implicit threat of Gondor’s wrath will deter any future attacks upon our lands." She smiled ever-so-slightly. "Especially in light of my recent widowhood. Harad will be in chaos, its chieftains fighting among themselves for the throne. Khand cannot unify its warring tribes to mount a large assault, and all potential raiding parties will be greeted by the Watch, in any case."

"You would except the hand of the Westron King who slew our men at Pellennor, my Queen?" Obari asked. She seemed to be teetering on the threshold of another shrieking rage.

"I excepted the hand of blood-drinking monsters to rid myself of Haradoun," Indassa replied coldly. "Shall I flinch at a treaty with a mere mortal man if it will protect my kingdom?" The Queen leveled a chilly gaze at the lot of them, and for the first time, Eowyn saw that it was not an act. Indassa was not playing Queen. She was sure and calm, holding her court beneath her hand with true monarch’s authority. Eowyn fought to hide the proud smile that welled up in her heart. "We are under martial law as long as I deem necessary," Indassa went on in a tone that brooked no argument.

The Wineseller’s Wife whirled on Eowyn. "This is all of you, Eowyn of Rohan!"

"What is all of me?" Eowyn smiled at her blandly. "Indassa is mistress here. I am not. Nor are you. Perhaps that is what grieves you most."

"I will not suffer such insolence from the barbarian whore of Gondor’s brigand King!" Obari spat, her black eyes bright with malice. How fast rumor travels, Eowyn marveled. The other women were all favoring her with the kind of speculative avidity that women display when they have just heard a particularly juicy bit of gossip about someone they dislike intensely.

"I," said Eowyn softly, "am still a maid. Which is more than can be said for either of your daughters."

The council ended with the other members of Queen’s Council physically restraining the red-faced Obari from leaping at Eowyn.

The following day, an hour after midday, a dance broke out in the Square of the Fountain. It was not a planned thing. It simply happened, coming together in the space of half an hour. Somalani drummers and Laketown pipers began to play in the square in an attempt to relieve general tension. A brace of Sabadi bows joined them and someone brought out a stringed Gondorian lyre. People gathered and the Bakers set up little stalls of fry bread and carob-dipped apples and sugar-cured dates and jerky. A short time later, Eowyn found herself watching Fallah spin round in the arms of Marsil of Gondor as the young man tried to lead her through some sort of Westron reel. Fallah was giggling like a young girl.

The strange and wonderful thing was that there seemed to theme here. Everyone was dancing the dances of their native lands, or the lands of their fathers. Many of the young women of Haradrim descent was dancing the Sa-Samanis in a kind of wild defiance of old custom. Sa-samanis was a dance of seduction, hips swiveling, arms held high in such a way that thrust the breasts up and outward, and extended in open invitation. Among the Haradrim, it was only danced in the privacy of the bedchamber, a woman’s powerful weapon to wind her husband round her little finger.

 Shaeri and a dozen women of the Watch moved through the sinuous paces of this dance. Eowyn reflected sourly that a leg broken in three places below the knee had not slowed the Commander of Deep Wells Watch House down one wit. The little knot of surviving Haradrim soldiers was watching in open-mouthed shock.

"Nay, young Chieftain!" An older man was telling Moussah as Eowyn passed within earshot. "These witches will not brook a second wife! They will wither your manhood and cast you out of doors to the Dhak-Dir you if do not keep solely to their bed. That is no way to live!"

"One beautiful wife and a dozen fine horses is no way to live?" Moussah chuckled. His gaze was upon Shaeri as she moved past, his eyes burning with interest. "Your blood runs cold with age, Hatab!"

"Sah, boy!" Hatab spat out a mouthful of chew weed. "You did not say that! A dozen horses? One good horse is worth a dozen women!"

Moussah eyed him critically. "A man cannot take a good horse to his bed, old uncle. Or at least, he should not try!" The raucous laughter of the others followed.

Eru, but this land had a wondrous magic about it, to have very nearly absorbed the remnants of its own invaders in less than two weeks time!

Eowyn found Indassa sitting on the stone circle that ringed the fountain. Her head was bent forward, deep in conversation with Fallah. She quickened her pace toward them, wondering what had gone amiss, what still had yet to be made ready for the attack on the morrow. Fallah’s rich laughter rang out, responding to something the Queen had said.

"Eowyn!" Indassa told her brightly. "I did it!"

"Did what?"

"I kissed the Elf!"

Eowyn stared at her, hoping her mouth was not hanging open like that of a hooked trout. "He kissed you?"

"No!" Indassa shook her head. "I kissed him. He was very surprised!"

Behind her, Eowyn heard Gimli’s deep, hearty chuckle. The Dwarf had come upon them just in time to hear Indassa’s last words. "I am sure he was, little Highness!"

Indassa sighed then, and that sigh seemed to dispel the childlike giggles. For the first time to Eowyn’s eyes, the little Queen seemed to have the physical appearance of a woman of nearly nineteen. The look in Indassa’s eyes was both wise and a little sad. "He spoke me fair and told me I was a lovely young woman," she said. "He said that one day I should meet a kind and handsome Man who would love me all the days of my life." She sighed again, this time very softly. "I knew I could not have one such as he for my own. But I am happy he was my first kiss." Her lips bowed mischievously.

"Even if the kiss was stolen."

"Come, my Queen!" Fallah said kindly, taking Indassa’s hand. "You said you wanted to see my shop of exploding wonders. I will take you on an official royal armory inspection."

"That is my call to arms as well," Gimli said. "I will go along as your royal body guard if the Lady Eowyn does not mind. Though I will warn you, Highness, Mistress Fallah’s particular recipe for what we Dwarves call mining powder is not a pretty scent."

"I have a kerchief to cover my nose," Indassa said cheerfully.

Eowyn watched them go. She had tensed reflexively at the thought of allowing Indassa within blast range of the fireworks armory, but the combination of Gimli and Fallah’s supervision would keep her safe from mishaps. She sat on the fountainside bench, running her mind over the nearly endless list of all that could go amiss tomorrow. The most vexing part of the entire battle plan was that the Crags were half a day’s hard ride east of the city. Half a day’s sunlight lost before battle was even joined. She told herself that the Elvish Shards would see them through, even if dusk caught them, but---

It must be a clean, quick and merciless strike. Twenty barrels of lamp oil combined with Fallah’s firecraft should burn them out, ensuring that Queen’s Guard Watch House and the sixty or so hand-picked members of other Houses, along with the full compliment of the foreign soldiers of Gondor and Harad should not even be called upon to fight in any true sense.

And if the liquid fire they meant to pour into their viper holes only stirred up a hornet’s nest among the survivors, the Hunters would reckon with Fallah’s skylighters and the Shards of Elwing’s orb.

All was in readiness, she told herself. As ready as mortals could be to beard monsters in their own dens. She wondered over Satti the Baker’s stall and bought a piece of honey-covered fry bread, trying to remember the last time she had eaten. Trying, for at least half an hour, not to think of tomorrow.

"I am sorry, my sister."

Shaeri was standing before her, her hands clasped before her like a penitent child.

"For what?" Eowyn asked, a bit ungraciously.

"For trying to steal your Elf warrior out of your own bed," Shaeri said. "That was ill done." The head of the Wineseller’s daughter was covered in a fine spray of water from the fountain and her clothes were soaked through with her own sweat from her exertions, but this only added to the aura of dark-eyed allure she carried about her like a second skin. Shaeri’s free way with men and her dark olive beauty always left Eowyn feeling awkward and colorless.

"He is not my Elf," Eowyn told her. She wished fervently everyone would stop imagining lovers for her. She frowned guiltily, remembering her ugly words for Shaeri’s mother in Council the day before. She had all but publicly proclaimed Obari’s daughters harlots. "I have said words in anger to your mother that have touched upon your honor," she said humbly. "I am sorry for that."

Shaeri’s face bloomed into a delighted grin. "Anything that sends my mother into a frothing rage is well-spoken, my Captain!"

She whirled away, using the unevenness of gait the splint on her leg gave her to accent the sway of her hips. She beckoned Moussah to join her as she danced. He obeyed, but slowly, striding toward her with an arrogant grace that made Eowyn wonder if Shaeri would conquer or be conquered here. Eowyn caught sight of Obari, veiled in matronly silks, watching this with a slightly pleased expression on her normally glowering face. The older woman would be awash in joy if her daughter settled upon a man of pure Haradrim blood, a Chieftain’s son, no less.

Eowyn watched the couples square off, their bodies in time with the pounding rhythm of the drums, their bodies in time with each other. It was odd how the aura of what one might daintily refer to as ‘romantic need’ had steadily increased around her in the last few days. One day, she would ask Fallah if there was some direct physical correlation between nerve-wracking tension and desire. Moussah and Shaeri moved together, their bodies in perfect sync, an inch from a kiss, each taunting the other with their nearness, suspended on the edge of almost.

Eowyn felt the amused half-smile fade from her lips. Perhaps she knew why Shaeri irritated her so at times. Eowyn never joined the revelers, never took a partner. She never felt that burning rhythm in her veins, the call to dance the oldest dance of man and woman. Indassa’s girlish attraction to Legolas had given her hope for herself as well the Queen. That one day they might both be healed and whole. Perhaps Haradoun, in his crude brutality, had done less damage ultimately than Grima. Haradoun had not made Indassa enjoy what he did to her.

"Have you seen Gimli?"

Eowyn started out of her own thoughts. Legolas was still favoring his right leg, but otherwise, he seemed completely recovered.

"He is with Fallah and Indassa at the presshouse," she said. She felt her body grow suddenly tense at the worry she saw in his face. "What has happened?"

"Nothing," he said, still frowning worriedly. "Or I hope it is nothing. I was with Hurin in the corrals below the city, helping him decide which horses would be least prone to panic. Gimli had said he would join me. I---I felt a sudden chill when I realized he was late." He shook his head as though to dispel the feeling. "It is probably nothing."

"Let us go to the presshouse," she suggested. "It is not far and I need to ask Fallah some questions about the new ‘fire bottles’ she is working on anyway."

They set off at an unhurried pace. Eowyn consciously slowed her stride to keep the Elf from overtaxing his leg wound. "Are you well enough to ride with us on the morrow?" She asked tentatively.

"I am well enough for this fight," he said briefly.

She took him at his word. She hated to be coddled after an injury or illness and had a suspicion he was much the same.

"Thank you," she said as they turned the corner onto Bright Street. "For you kindness to Indassa."

"She is a sweet child." He said with a brief, sad smile. "Though, I will confess, she startled me. She was grieved when I would not let her kiss me a second time and asked if I found her unpretty."

"Oh," she said softly.

"I wish---" He stopped walking and turned to face her, his beautiful face wistful and sad. "I wish I could let mortals see themselves with Elvish sight, that sees the flesh as the imperfect shell which encases true beauty. I wish I could let your folk see how beautiful they truly are, how their spirits burn like candles lit at both ends. You are like falling stars---brilliant and beautiful and so very, very brief sometimes I almost weep when I look at you."

Gazing into his eyes, Eowyn felt a thrill of wonder and unease. There were years beyond counting reflected there and an inner light of vision and perception that was beyond her. Utterly beyond. It so was easy to forget what he was at times, how uncanny and different his nature was from hers, even from Gimli’s. The familiarity of friendship let her forget too often.

"Fallah told me Indassa’s tale," he said softly. "If I could, I would give her all that she desires of me. She deserves as many sweet kisses as her young heart can withstand. But I cannot. In the Firstborn, desire only follows love. Or else, they bloom as one in the heart. Want does not kindle in our bodies unless first we have given our hearts. Your Indassa is a dear child, for whom I wish all the happiness in the world, but I do not love her."

"If the nature of Mankind were fashioned so, it would be a happier world," she told him.

A blinded surge of heat and force tore down the narrow corridor of the street and knocked them off their feet.

Eowyn climbed to her feet, staring stupidly at the hail of burning wood shards falling all about them like incandescent rain. "Do not mix the green canisters with the blue, Sommi," Fallah’s voice echoed in her head. "Unless you want to be blown sky high."

She began running, her heart in her mouth, praying aloud in a raw, hysterical voice that somehow, some way, the three occupants of the presshouse had not been inside when it blew. She was aware of Legolas sprinting ahead of her, but of nothing else. Not Legolas voice crying out Gimli’s name, his voice as broken with fear as her own. Not the laundry maids running from the laundry next door as it caught fire, sending up the cry to bring water to douse the blaze.

She stumbled into the burning rubble where the presshouse had stood only moments ago. She began turning over everything she could find that was bigger than a cupboard, ignoring the blistering heat and the noxious fumes. The one mercy seemed to be that the explosion had been to violent it had snuffed out its own fire for the most part. After several torturous minutes of searching, she literally ran into Legolas.

She gripped his arms. "Where are they? Where are they?!"

"They could not have been----been blown to nothing!" He said. His gray eyes widened, standing out starkly in his pale face. "There is a cellar, Gimli said! If they were down there---!"

Eowyn made a soft noise of renewed hope. They dug through the smoking wreckage and found the trap door. Eowyn wrenched it open, taking no notice of the hot metal handle that scalded her hand. She slid down the ladder, batting away the smoke, shielding her watering eyes. She moved forward and stumbled over something, barely aware that Legolas had leapt lightly to the ground beside her. She knelt down, and saw what she had stumbled over.

It was Fallah.

She lay one shaking hand before her friend’s mouth and exhaled sharply in relief as she felt breath there. She lay one hand aside the physician’s head and it came away damp and sticky with blood.

"She must have been hit by a falling beam," Eowyn said. "She is unconscious but she lives! We must—"

"Eowyn."

She turned her head, all of her hope dying in the quiet, terrible sadness she heard in his voice. She began shaking her head in denial even as she crawled across the dirt floor of the cellar. No! No! No!

She scrambled beneath the smoke-wreathed shaft of sunlight that shot through the open door above them, following his voice to the far end of the cellar. It was chill and dank as a cave down here and nearly as dark. She stopped, staring down at what he had found, frozen in time. Her mind was trying desperately to reject what her eyes were seeing.

Indassa lay on her back, dead eyes open in innocent surprise. Her head was tilted at an odd angle. This had not been a falling ceiling beam. Something----something had broken her little neck and cast her aside like a piece of rubbish.

Eowyn did not feeling Legolas’ hand threading through hers. His voice was only a distant buzzing in her ears. He was saying something about Fallah needing help, about finding Gimli. She knew what he was saying was important. Indassa’s body was bereft of life, an empty house that no amount of help could fill again. She knew she should stand and act quickly. She knew that a Healer’s attention might mean the difference between life and death to Fallah now, but---

She could not move. She could not act. She could see nothing but the boundless promise of the future that had stretched out before Indassa---love and long life and freedom for herself and her people. And all of those sweet promises would never be fulfilled. All of Indassa’s possible futures terminated in this dank hole in the ground. How long had she let the girl out of her sight. And hour? Surely it had not been a full hour since Indassa and Fallah had left the Square, the Queen and the apothecary’s daughter, walking hand in hand like sisters. She shook her head again, knowing no amount of denial could ever make it right again.

"I am sorry," she whispered, touch the girl’s beautiful face. The skin was already growing cool to the touch.

Eowyn’s eyes widened. Her lungs filled with smoky air as she inhaled. She sat for an instant, motionless, poised on the edge of a scream as the irrevocable impact finally struck her with full force, like a sword thrust through the heart.

She screamed.

She doubled over, wailing like a houseless soul, digging nails into her palms. And dry-eyed. Always barren of tears, even now. She could not cry, so she simply keened.

Legolas gently raised her up by her shoulders, unbending her body and wrapping his arms around her. After a space of time, her cries tapered down to a low soft moan. He lay a hand against the back of her head. "Cry, mellon-nin! You must weep!"

"I cannot!" She moaned. "Oh, Eru! I wish I could!" She twisted out of his gentle embrace. She did not want comfort. She did not deserve it. She pushed him back and shook her head again. She shoved feeling and pain down into a well of still cold water, deep inside the bower of her heart. She must move and think. She could not feel now. Fallah needed her! Fallah needed her and was not beyond all help!

"Fallah," she said aloud. She met his gaze and closed her heart to the unshed tears standing in his eyes, the sympathy and answering grief she saw there. "And---and Gimli?

He began to shake his head in bewilderment. Then he froze, every muscle in tensing with sudden fear. "Run," he hissed.

"What---?"

He did not wait for an answer. He grabbed her around the waist and hurled her with all his might toward the bright shaft of light below the cellar’s open hatch.

"Run!" He cried. She heard the ring of his long knives clearing their scabbards. "Do not---!" A dull, meaty thud cut off his words.

She drew her sword, standing wild-eyed in the swirling dust motes of sunshine from above, hearing the sound of running feet, of Ikako’s voice shouting commands. Again, the cold draft of cave smell filled her nostrils.

Had they burrowed up through the cellar floor in the night and lain in wait, she wondered? Or had they simply slipped last night under cover of darkness? And of course, in broad daylight, no one would be carrying a Shard with them. But how had they gotten past the two Shards she had left here in the presshouse out of sheer paranoia as the day of the attack grew closer? For the moment it did not matter. She would not run and leave her surviving friends to their mercies. She would be damned to eternal torment if she let one of Indassa’s murderers leave this cellar alive.

If she moved out of the shaft of light she was a dead woman. Fallah, she could see, lying just a few feet from the base of the ladder. Legolas and Gimli---the could not be dead!

"Show yourself!" She commanded the shifting darkness around her.

He moved out of shadow, emerging in a gust of cold, rancid air with casual unhurried contempt.

"Morsul," she breathed.

"Give me a kiss," he said with a mocking smile. "And perhaps I shall not

bid my brothers tear out the Elf’s throat."

She returned his gaze blankly. She could feel herself sinking deeper into that cold quiet place of fearless, terrible rage that cared nothing for life, that welcomed death like a lover’s fond embrace if in dying she could slay the one before her. It was from this bleak cell of icy, merciless purpose that she had slain Angmar.

"You will kill him regardless," she said indifferently. The utter absence of any feeling in her voice gave him pause. "As you killed Indassa," she said. "Was it you who wrung her neck, Morsul?"

He nodded slowly. He smiled, regaining his arrogant composure, baring razored incisors. His teeth were tipped with blood. Was it Gimli’s, she wondered. Or Legolas’? She could feel the others encircling her like gusts of dark winds, laughing softly among themselves.

"My Queen commanded her death," he said. "For the defiance of the Watch at the South Pass. For the plot to burn us out of our happy home. The apothecary’s daughter lives, but I have stove in her skull. Her brain swells with her own blood. She will die soon, or better yet, she will live on in mindless idiocy. A fitting punishment for such a clever little firebug."

Eowyn drew her long knife, holding it low and ready as she held her sword in her right hand. "And Legolas and Gimli?"

"They shall have a private audience with my Queen," Morsul said. "She has spun many tales and webs to bring them within her reach."

"So, then," Eowyn smiled cold death into the monster’s face. "They live still. That is all I wished to know." She whipped up both sword and knife, holding them at an angle to the sunlight above her, reflecting it into his face with her sword blade. Her knife cast a beam of borrowed sun at the obsidian shape the loomed up on her left. Morsul blurred backwards with a startled angry howl of pain, but the others were not so fast. She spun, casting sunlight with the twin mirrors of her blades, feeling an icy, vicious satisfaction at their high, witchy shrieks of pain. The sickening scent of burnt flesh filled the room.

"Clever bitch," Morsul chuckled thickly.

Something bowled out of the blackness and struck her like a falling boulder. She flew back, falling out of the light. The hard-packed dirt of the cellar floor struck the wind out of her lungs. She had one fleeting instant to realize that the ‘boulder’ Morsul had lobbed at her was Gimli’s unconscious body.

"Even a naugrim is good for something," Morsul’s voice said in her ear.

Then he gripped her by the hair and dragged her into the darkness. Morsul wrenched her to her feet like a rag doll and spun her around to face him. His hand whipped out like a snake striking and locked around her throat in a choke hold. The hand around her neck was no longer the hand of an Elf. It had shifted to a taloned clawed thing. He was burned, one side of his face charred and still smoking. She watched in horror as the dark Elf’s beautiful face twisted, the bones rippling sickly beneath the skin, threatening to morph into some unimaginable monstrosity. He uttered a low, snarling growl as he fought for control. Slowly, he seemed to gather himself, to reign his temper with a supreme act of will. His face settled back into its normal ivory planes, perfect and unburned once more. He eyed her thoughtfully.

Here was the end. One way or another she was lost. She did not think or stop to consider. She turned the knife in her clenched hand upon herself and trust it upward toward her own heart. But even this was denied her. He caught her hand casually, as though he had known what she would do. He stopped the blade a half instant before it pierced her breast.

"None of that," he told her softly. "You will not escape us so easily."

She watched, paralyzed like a mouse gazing down the open maw of a kingsnake, as he bared his fangs and quite deliberately pierced his own tongue. He smiled, like a man savoring a long awaited banquet, as his mouth filled with blood.

The hand around her throat flexed, strangling her. And when she opened her mouth, desperate for air, he pulled her to him, pressing his foul mouth against hers. He thrust his tongue forward, forcing the blood down her throat in an obscene perversion of a kiss.

She could not twist free or even wretch. She could feel the poison of his blood burning inside her, down to her belly, all the way to her fingertips. She did not know how long this went on, though if it had continued much longer than it did she was sure her mind would have simply come unhinged from its anchor to sanity. He withdrew, planting a gentle kiss on her forehead, smiling with delight.

The darkness bled away to a crimson-tinted blur. She sagged forward, falling against him, her knees buckling. "No," she whimpered, feeling terribly small, terribly lost. Fear, mortal terror such as she had never known, flooded through her with the burning, tingling taint of his blood.

Not this! her mind screamed. Let him tear her breastbone asunder and feast on her heart! Let him drain away every drop of blood in her body and gnaw upon her bones! But not this! Not this!

"Shh, my sunflower," he said gently, stoking her hair. "Do not fear. I have not changed you. Not completely. I have simply made you more pliant. And a bit less fragile. It would go ill for me with my mistress if I let you take your own life. She has great plans for you and your fellow heroes of Sauron’s ill-fated Great War." He swept her up in his arms and her head lolled back in lethargic horror.

"Come!" He cried.

She could see now, as though her eyes had suddenly altered to accommodate the darkness. There were half a dozen night things crouched in the farthest corner of the cellar, nursing the sizzling burn wounds she had dealt them.

Legolas was conscious, his face bloodied. Two of them held him pinned. One had a filthy, bone-colored hand clamped over his mouth as he writhed in their immovable grips like a madman. Morsul knelt before him, still holding her limp body in his arms. He gripping the other Elf’s pale hair roughly, raising Legolas head up he could peer into his prisoner’s face.

Legolas spat out a string of fluent curses in his own tongue and the dark Elf only shook his head in disgust. "Silvan features and Sindarin coloring. You are a right mongrel, are you not, boy? And sworn brother to one of the stinking naugrim, no less. I knew you grandsire in Doriath, son of Thranduil. How fallen is the House of Oropher!"

The sound of running feet, clattering over the rubble above, familiar voices calling her name. Eowyn tried to answer, tried to scream, but no sound would come forth.

"Come!" Morsul said again "Bring them!"

The cellar shifted and wheeled about her as Morsul leapt to his feet, still holding her close, like a father carrying an ailing child. He led them to a ragged hole in the earthen floor. It gave forth of the cool dank breath the vast caverns that lay beneath. The world upended as Morsul dove head first into the open maw of the sinkhole he and his fellows had torn beneath the cellar. Then they were falling downward into a bottomless sea of night.

(Coming Soon: Chapter III---The Nest of the Hunters)

The Price of Freedom

By Erin Lasgalen

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

Chapter III---The Nest of the Hunters

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

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

     “Beautiful,” she whispered dreamily.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     “Legolas!” She gasped.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     “You---“ He began.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     “It stinks of fresh blood,” she said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     But death did not come.     

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     “Eowyn---“

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     “Pardon, Mistress,” Morsul asked humbly.

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

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

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

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

     “Barrier?” Eowyn repeated unsteadily.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     “My Queen---“ Morsul began.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     “No!”  She wailed.  “No!”

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

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

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

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

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

     “What is she doing?!” Eowyn moaned.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     “We have no swords,” she said tensely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     “Can you still speak?” She asked softly.

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

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

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

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

     “Not quite,” she replied.

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

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

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

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

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

      “Yes,” she agreed.

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

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

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

      Oh Sweet Elbereth….

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     “Tell me,” she said.

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

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

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

     “Thuringwethil,” Eowyn whispered. 

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

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

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

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

     Eowyn stared down at the flints in her hands.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     She did not answer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Price of Freedom

By Erin Lasgalen

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

Chapter 4----Sun, Fire and Shadow

She woke with the sunrise, bleary-eyed and sluggish, her head pounding. She shifted against the warm body that lay curled about hers, burying her face in the smooth skin of his chest, willing the burning behind her eyes to subside. They lay on their sides, face to face in a warm tangle of limbs, her head pillowed on his arm.

"Legolas," she said faintly. "It is dawn." She jostled him gently and winced. The wounds in her shoulder had stiffened up. She touched the two sets of bite marks and felt the heat of infection in the punctures. She was light-headed and feverish and every muscle felt as though it had been pulped with a mace.

He made a muted sound of quiet anguish and lowered his head, gently removing her hand from the inflamed wounds. "I hurt you," he whispered against her hair. "I am sorry."

He set his mouth against the wounds there, as though he thought he could kiss it better. She knew little of Elves, but she was sure he had no such power. The warm press of his lips on her skin did not sear away the infection or erase the physical battering and blood loss she had sustained during the last two days, but it did much to distract her from her discomfort.

She shuddered with reaction as he moved his mouth along the line of her collarbone. His arms had curled about her, drawing her body closer, and she clung to him. His warm hand was beneath her tunic, gliding up her spine and down again. He rolled them both a bit so that she lay halfway atop him, freeing his other hand to touch her. He set both hands on either side of her waist and laughed softly in her ear when he found a ticklish spot just above her navel. She gazed down at him in a daze of breathless heat, thought and sense flown like hummingbirds in autumn, as he ran one finger along the flat plane of her stomach, his face a flushed portrait of mischief. She realized distantly she was now sitting astride him like some wanton brothel girl.

There was something wrong here, something important she had forgotten. She frowned, trying hard to think. She took his hands in hers, stopping their upward exploration of her body before she lost the capacity for anything remotely resembling rational thought.

His eyes were wide and full of sorrowful apology. "You are angry with me." Their normal deep gray had darkened to indigo with worry and regret.

"No," she said. She ground her teeth, her head swimming, trying to remember what it was she had forgotten. "There was something we needed to do at dawn. I cannot remember what it was!"

His eyes dimmed and he looked troubled. "Yes," he said slowly. "I---I have forgotten as well. But it was important, I think." He ran one hand up count of her ribcage in a thoughtful, almost absent, caress.

As he did this, his fingers brushed the side of her breast and she jerked against him in reaction. She held his eyes, her breath quickening as, hesitantly, and with exquisite gentleness, he cupped her breast in his hand. Heat exploded inside her, burning upward from the juncture of her thighs, sweeping away all her worries of forgotten chores left undone. She leaned down and kissed him fiercely, rocking her hips against his in a slow, sliding rhythm, reveling in the way he arched and gasped beneath her. He was speaking to her in his own tongue, uttering the beautiful alien words in a raw, breathless whisper.

She smiled against his mouth and pulled her tunic over her head, shedding it in one quick movement. She set one hand on the ground beside him, pulling at the lacings of her breeches with the other. And as she did, she felt a sharp prick against her palm. She winced, holding up her hand. She had cut it on a sharp bone shard----

Bones shards---

They were lying on a mountain of crushed bone!

Oh, gods of Earth and Sky!

The cold clarity of recollection was like a bucket of ice water down her spine. Which, she reflected shamefully, was apparently the very thing they both needed at the moment. She met his eyes, and somehow, her sudden change of mood communicated itself to him. He froze beneath her, his face suddenly creased with a frown of confusion. Then his eyes flew wide.

"Eowyn!" He gasped. "What---what are we---?" He trailed off, his face suddenly flushing to the roots of his pale hair. "Nay, do not answer that. I know what we were doing. Or what we were about to do. Eru! I had forgotten our danger and very nearly my own name! What---what is happening to us?" His voice was soft and a little frightened.

She realized with a flash of sudden insight that this---this taint of evil, this slow downward spiral into darkness, terrified him more than a host of morgul beasts. He had no fear of death in battle whatsoever, but this internal attack upon his soul, this plague upon his very essence, was the stuff of nightmares to him. In that respect, they were very similar.

She eased her body off of his with as much tattered dignity as she could manage under such circumstances and hurriedly pulled on her tunic. She turned away from him, hearing the gravelly crunch of bone debris as he sat up carefully. She folded her arms around herself in mortified humiliation, as though she were still half-naked.

"It is part of the change, I think," she said quietly, trying to keep her voice even, trying to act as though nothing had happened. "With all of the other Hunters, Simiasha’s blood changed their bodies, but it also---" She searched for the right words, hearing her voice crack like that of an old woman. "---blurred their memories of their lives as living beings. And upon this blank slate, she remade them in her own image, infusing them with her own evil."

Oh, gods, what must he think of her! It was not only the shameful memory of how she had somehow taken physical pleasure when he had bitten her last night. As an Elf, whose body never warmed to desire without the catalyst of love, he must feel sickened, perhaps even violated, by what they had---what they had almost---

She could feel him watching her closely. She finally found the courage to turn around. His face blank of any expression at all. He swallowed slowly. "So---so, without Simiasha’s influence, our memories of who and what we are still continue to dim?"

She nodded. Her hands were trembling, so she clenched them tightly. Even if they lived through this, he would surely never be able to bear the sight of her again. His friendship, one of the most important friendships of her life, was lost to her. "Only without her imprint, we become like wild things. Or in my case, like---like an animal in season." She turned her face away, not wanting to see the sharp, bright flash of hurt that leapt out of him at her harsh words. "Legolas," she said tightly. "I am sorry! I know you would never---I---I know that you must be horrified---"

"If I remember correctly," he said softly, carefully, "You initiated nothing. It is I who should be asking your forgiveness." He seems to shift indecisively where he sat, as though he wished to move closer, but feared what she would do if he did. "Do not say ‘animal’, Eowyn. Say rather, like a child who is a year or two past learning to walk. That is what it felt like to me, at least. There was no thought, no care, no fear of consequence. I saw that you were soft and warm and as fair as any Elf maid ever born. I felt that you were dear to me, as dear as the two brothers of my heart. And so, I took you in my arms. My sweet friend, we are stained with evil, but in the memory of that act I can find nothing but light and joy!"

She doubled over, one hand on her stomach, feeling sick with relief and---and everything! She thought longingly of the dreamy, almost drunken euphoria she had felt an hour or two ago when she lay in his arms in the aftermath of the blood letting that had freed his soul from Simiasha’s thrall. She had an unwholesome sense of pressure in her chest, a feeling of something inside her approaching overload. She felt like a water skin that had been filled beyond capacity. She felt ready to burst. Legolas edged nearer, kneeling before her motionless, in an agony of indecision. Finally, he reached out to her, caressing her hair and face tentatively. The mere brush of his fingertips seemed to quell the greater part of her distress.

"I suffered loss of inhibition and memory moments ago, but otherwise, I was still myself. I said things to you last night that I cannot unsay," he told her gently. She raised her head up to meet his sea gray eyes and saw that they were shining with unshed tears. "But having spoken, I cannot find it in my heart to regret having done so."

She could not think about all that his words implied. Not now. She turned her mind away from it, shaking her head. It was too much. She lay her hand against his mouth, softly, before he could say more. "Do not speak further!" She nearly pleaded. "There are too many things at war in my mind and heart. If you add one more thing to the brew I may fly apart!"

"That I understand all too well," he said softly. "I know we are both at the limit of what we can bear. But we must be strong. We will see daylight this day, Eowyn! I swear it!" He turned his face into the hand she had rested on his cheek and kissed the palm of her hand, almost reverently. "We shall speak of these things later, with the Sun on our faces."

"Yes," she agreed, smiling back at him feebly.

She sat up straight. It was too soon to fall to pieces. She would have ample opportunity for that later. She groped on the ground for the fire bottle she had found in the dead girl’s hand and held it up. "We must find more of these. They are tin bottles full of a liquid distillation of Fallah’s burning powder. No one used them at the battle of South Pass because there was no time to light them. But Fallah passed them out to many of the Watch that night. The---the other bodies of the women who were taken that night may yield several more of these bottles."

They searched the scores of the newly dead, a grizzly treasure hunt. The bodies of the women of the Watch yielded half a dozen more bottles. They might have found more, but after an hour of this, Eowyn could search no more. She had turned over too many decomposing corpses with familiar faces, all of whom she had led to their deaths.

Legolas took her hand and simply held it, offering no word of condolence as she stared down at the face of Ibasha of Bent Bow Watch House. Suni had said the girl would have turned eighteen on two months.

"These six bottles we have will be enough," he told her. "We will give her and all the others here a burial of sorts very soon."

She turned her head upward, craning her neck back to see the seemingly endless well above them. Beside her, Legolas lay his hand upon the wall of the Pit and tore away a tatter of brown lichen-like growth. He lay his hand against the uneven, pock-faced stone beneath. "We will have to climb out of this Pit," he told her. "We must not start any sort of fire before we reach the top." He crumbled the lichen in his hands. It was as dry as saw grass. "If this coats the walls all the way to the top the fire will catch us up before we can climb out."

She found a provision pack lying beside one of the Gondorian dead and loaded the bottles into it gently, slinging the satchel across her back. Beside her, Legolas was speaking to another soldier of Minas Tirith, murmuring a soft apology in Elvish as he removed the Man’s boots and tunic, donning them hastily. If they managed to escape the Nest, the Dustlands west of the Crags were harsh desert scrub. He would need to be clothed and shod if the Sun did not finish them both off when they emerged from these caverns.

She balled up as much dry cloth from the older bodies as she could stuff into the pack and, after a moment’s consideration, added the femur bones of what must have been a large orc.

He smiled grimly beside her. "Let us finish this, Eowyn!"

They begin to climb, hand over hand, foothold over foothold, in an agony of slow, painful ascent. If she thought her body had ached when she woke, it was nothing compared to the sawing torture in every joint and muscle that grew steadily with each cramping yard they achieved.

Time passed, and she had to fight not to lose faith in their progress as the Pit receded by infinitesimal degrees. However far they climbed, the top was never visible. There was only an empty sea of black above them, as dark as the skies of Arda before the stars were woven into the heavens.

After an endless, silent progression upward, the face of the Pit’s walls smoothed away to sheer, featureless perfection. She paused briefly, craning her neck back. As far as she could see, the rock face above her was as polished as a river bed pebble. She closed her eyes briefly, steeling her heart against what she was about to do. She held one battered, filthy hand aloft, showing Legolas her solution to their predicament. She did not have the voice to speak it aloud. She concentrated, finding muscles and tissue that had not existed three days ago. A dozen feet away, Legolas watched in half-terrified fascination as her hand shifted its shape subtly, growing slightly larger and immeasurably stronger. She extended her nails like a cat unsheathing its claws with dry sob of horror. Then she drove her claw into the stone, making a purchase where there had been none. After a moment of silence, she heard him do the same. She did not look. She did not want to see the soft, warm hands that had caressed her body an hour ago change to the clawed talons of a monster.

They moved upward in dead silence, hand over hand, like two large felines scaling the side of a great black oak.

"Eowyn!" He said suddenly.

She stopped, seeing he had stopped moving. He was peering upward. His fair face was strained but alight with relief. "I can see the top!" He cried. "They have covered the mouth of the Pit with the dead as they did when we first entered their hunting ground."

"We will have to punch our way through just as they did," she said, trying not to imagine what that would entail.

"There is something else," he murmured, quiet fear shot through every nuance of his voice. "Can you---can you sense them? I do not know how to describe the perception, but I can feel them. They are all around us!"

She cast about, extending her senses. She swallowed, cold with fear. They were everywhere, dozens, hundreds of them. But where?! She could see nothing. The mystery was solved a moment later when Legolas put his head through a netted veil of dry lichen. He tore the veil aside to reveal a man-sized recess in the rock, perhaps three feet high and as deep. The hanging moss hid the individual sepulchers the Hunters has torn out of the Pit’s sheer walls. The dead thing Legolas has uncovered stirred irritably in its sleep, but did not rise. Morsul had indicated that only the eldest and strongest of Simiasha’s army of the dead could move about during daylight hours. Eowyn prayed that all of them had been slain when the Huntress had exterminated her High Court in a fit of rage.

They skirted the boltholes as much as they were able, climbing toward their destination through the ringed catacombs of little tombs. The only sound was their labored breath and the rattling chink of breaking granite from each new handhold they tore out of the wall. Little by little, the roof of crushed carrion grew closer.

They stopped a few yards from the top. There was a leather tarp drawn over the maw of the Pit, another layer of shelter from the sun and from possible daylight interlopers. Eowyn swallowed bile as she realized belatedly that the leather of the Pit’s cover had been harvested from neither deer nor cattle.

"We shall have to---to dig our way out," she moaned softly.

"Meleth-nin, you---" He said gently. His brow creased with terrible strain but he tried to smile at her. "Mellon-nin," he began again, altering the Elvish word slightly, "Stay strong! We are nearly out!"

She set her jaw and began to climb. She found the ledge where the tarp met the floor of the hunting ground chamber. She pulled herself upward, swinging one leg over the edge. And with a low groan of horror, she ripped through the shroud of human skin and began to dig her way out, up through the crushed hill of corpses above them. She held her breath, not wanting to breathe or swallow as she clawed her way up, out of the grave Simiasha had buried her in. After an eternity that could not have been more than five minutes, her hand pushed through to open air. And with that one taste of freedom, her nerve broke. She scrambled up through the last few feet of the rotting dead and emerged into the Haint Chamber gasping like a suffocated miner. She tore her leg free, the last little bit of her still trapped within the press, hearing as though from a great distance the animal noises of broken panic coming from her own throat.

She rolled off the hill of human debris and tumbled to a stop on her side. She lay there, straining for air, blanking her mind of what she had just done so she would not fall to shrieking. She lay there, not moving, feeling the flesh and bone of her hands shift back to their normal state. The immediate world around her began to withdraw in some strange, dreamy fashion. She wondered idly how much more of an assault her mind and heart could withstand before she tumbled into some bottomless abyss of madness. She wondered if madness would be a welcome relief when it finally came. She lay and listened to the sound of her own heartbeat, feeling as though everything that had troubled her was growing distant and unreal.

Someone lifted her limp, unresponsive body with exquisite gentleness. A warm hand brushed her hair back from her eyes, wiping some nameless black sticky substance from her face. He was speaking to her in his own tongue, murmuring soft lilting phrases she did not understand. But his voice was a comfort to her and his arms around her were a balm to her wounded soul. And slowly, it began to tow her upward, out of the deep waters of numb shock, back to her senses.

"I will carry you from this place," he told her finally in the Common Tongue.

"No," she croaked. Her blurred thoughts snapped back into focus. She kicked her feet feebly for he had already lifted her and was making his way across the cavern room, toward the tunnel that led upward to the Temple Chamber. "No!" She said in a stronger voice. "Set me down. We must destroy the Pit!"

He stopped and carefully set her on her wobbly feet. Her legs seemed to be made of jelly. She leaned upon his unfoundering strength, cursing her own squeamish weakness. As she rummaged through the satchel still strapped across her back, he sank to his knees, drawing her down with him. That was better. She could kneel if she could not stand on her own. She withdrew the six precious bottles one at a time with shaking hands. After a moment’s thought, she set two aside. For Simiasha.

"We do not need to uncover the mouth of the Pit," she said hoarsely. "If we set the mountain of bodies afire, the tarp will collapse and carry the fire down to them."

"Aye," he whispered.

She grasped the flints, trying to spark a flame as Legolas wrapped the dry cloth she had brought around the femur bone that was too big to have belonged to a Man, fashioning a crude torch. After an eternity of missed strikes, her wavering hands hit a spark against the dust-dry cloth. They fanned it with their breath, nursing the little blaze. It caught the ancient fabric and began to burn merrily.

Legolas held the fire bottle between them, his gaze burning like the golden flame of the torchlight that was reflected in his eyes. "Set them all to burn, Eowyn!" He breathed.

She lit the wick of Fallah’s little tin bottle of distilled burning powder and Legolas threw it toward the center of the mound of dead with all his might. His aim was perfection. The bottle struck the crest of the hill that sheltered the Pit and ignited in a brilliant shower of flame. The small explosion scattered the bits of liquid fire about the chamber and---

It was like a torch tossed into a dry hayloft. Everything caught the blaze and ran with it.

"One more!" Legolas said with grim delight.

She lit the wick of another bottle and he lobbed it into the center of the blaze. The concussion was deafening. The cavern ceiling above their heads trembled. The mound that covered the pit had fallen in a bit. It was sagging in a slow concave progression. It looked like a sinkhole about to give way.

Below, deep in the black womb of the Pit, the hunters were stirring, snarling in their sleep with fear. They could smell the bonfire above their tombs. They could sense the terrible danger, but they were helpless to move or act. Simiasha, in her wasteful, foolhardy at of rage at her High Court, had destroyed the only children who might have risen to defend the thousands who slept below.

The tarp buckled and gave way and the mound above collapsed, falling into the Pit, bearing the fire down to the Hunters. Eowyn listened with pitiless satisfaction to their shrieks as the dry moss shrouds over their nests brought the fire to each one of them in his own little tomb.

"They are burning!" Eowyn almost shrieked, caught somewhere between hysteria and joy. "Legolas, they are burning!"

"And so shall we if we do not move!" He said urgently.

The fire was almost upon them, sweeping everything away in its cleansing path. "Back up the tunnel to the Temple!" Legolas cried. He pulled at her hand as she scooped up the remaining fire bottles. He practically jerked her to her feet and dragged her back sharply, just as the leading edge of the fire licked at her trouser leg. "Quickly!"

They ran for the tunnel exit. Or he ran, one hand locked around her wrist, dragging her behind him. She found her legs were working again quite well now. It was amazing how the prospect of being roasted alive could restore one’s strength. The flames ran behind them, nipping at their heels. They scrambled up the steep grade of the tunnel and the fire kept pace with them. Almost too late, she realized why. One of the fire bottles was leaking, trailing liquid firestarter behind them as they ran.

"Get down!" She shouted. She tossed the fractured bottle behind them.

It exploded, knocking them off their feet, for there had been no time to duck. Eowyn raised her head, coughing and saw with horror that the fire was now behind and before them. Legolas bounded back to his feet, his hand still locked upon her wrist in a death grip. He lifted her off her feet without a word, while she touched her head dazedly. Her hand came away bloody. Legolas slung her over one shoulder as though she were a sack of grain and sprang forward, tearing through the gauntlet of flame before them that barred their escape. She was choking on smoke now, suffocating on the burning strength of unnumbered bodies. Her smoke-burnt eyes were streaming and she could see nothing. He bore her through the fire, unflinching, unfaltering, his voice a soft hoarse melody as he prayed under his breath.

She squeezed her eyes shut as she was suddenly blinding by an eye-searing world of light. They had stopped moving. She was lying on her side and he was striking her left leg with quick, desperate swats. Her trousers must be on fire, she thought with vague worry. After a moment or two he stopped beating at the flame and collapsed beside her. He was breathing in great, labored gulps of air. He must have put out the flames in her clothing, she concluded reasonably. She was positive she was not on fire.

Little by little, she came back to herself again, rising again from the peaceful lassitude of mild shock. They were in the Temple Chamber. She sat groggily. A thin stream of blood from her head wound was stinging her smoke-reddened eyes. She wiped it away absently. Legolas was lying on his back. His breath had slowed to an even rhythm. His face was covered with soot and grime, but he smiled up at her faintly.

"That was a bit of a close call," he said.

Her mouth threatened to curl upward. "Just a bit," she agreed.

She gazed about them, trying to get her bearings. At the mouth of the tunnel, a steady river of black smoke was pouring forth. "Simiasha was not in the Pit," she said grimly.

"No," he affirmed. He sat, then stood with painful deliberation. She slowly climbed to her feet as well. He seemed to be scanning the chamber, searching for something. Slowly, his face drained of color. "She is near," he hissed. "Can you sense her?"

"No," she said. She clutched the flints in one hand and held the three remaining fire bottles to her breast as though they were fragile children. "I do not feel anything."

"Perhaps I can sense her because she forced her own blood upon me." A visible shudder rippled through his body. His eyes grew unfocused. He slowly raised his hand and pointed to the throne dais at the far end of the Temple. "She lies there." His hand was shaking. His voice was soft and fearful, like that of a terrified child. "We must finish her, Eowyn. This is more important than either of us. She---she told me what she plans for Aragorn and Gondor. For the whole world. She does not wish to kill Estel. She wants him for her own as she wants me. With him as her creature, she will cover Middle Earth with her kind. Those she sent West she gave leave spawn others from the young and strong of every village they overthrow. They have already spread West of Emyn Muil and deep into Near Harad. If Aragorn is truly on his way to Rhunballa, she commanded them to let him pass, but to close the way behind him and cut off his return to Gondor."

"Then let us rid the world of her," Eowyn said harshly.

They advanced cautiously, as though they were trodding across a field of vipers. The throne was empty, though the dais was still littered with remnants of the High Court.

Beside her, Legolas made a soft noise of terror when they were less than twenty feet from the dais. "I can hear her in my mind, Eowyn!" He hissed. "She is whispering to me, even though the shield of your blood. Even in her sleep. I---I may be a danger to you if we venture closer."

"Does she press at your will as she did when she forced you to drink?" Eowyn asked softly.

"No," he said. "But I fear she may---" He released a slow, unsteady breath, his hand seeking hers. He was shaking like a leaf. She clasped his hand tightly in hers. "She shoved herself into my soul, Eowyn. She thrust her mind into mine and poisoned everything that was me with her foulness. I---I will not survive that a second time!"

They moved forward, hand in hand, until they stood just before the dais. Nothing stirred. Nothing moved. Eowyn could find no sense anywhere of any thinking being other than herself and Legolas.

"Come, my strong, clever children. Let us talk."

Eowyn gave a gasping little shriek, hearing Legolas moan with terror beside her. The voice was in their minds, as clear as words whispered into their ears.

A low rumble of stone against stone shook the dais. They fell back, stumbling, clumsy in their fear, as the great platform divided in two halves and slid apart. A gust of icy, rancid air billowed up from the crypt that lay below. The circular mouth of the Queen’s dark bower was a black gaping void of night.

Eowyn tore her hand free of Legolas’ and knelt, fumbling with the flints.

She uttered a low cry of frustrated exhaustion as one of the precious bottles tumbled from her grasp and clattered loudly on the stone. She set the three bottles before her in a neat little row.

"Nothing to say to me, girl?" Simiasha mused disapprovingly. She sounded for all the world like Eowyn’s mother, gently chiding her after some childish tantrum. "And what of you, my Legolas?" Low soft laughter, the dusky chuckle of a sated, well-pleased woman gave her lover.

Legolas swallowed a sob. Eowyn could not tell whether he chose to kneel beside her or if his knees simply gave way. "I am not yours!" He rasped. "You are about to die, you vile, filthy thing!"

"Not mine?" A ripple of sweet, mocking amusement. "Oh, but you are, my beauty! Both of you! You have proven yourselves stronger than all my brood combined. Give yourselves to me completely, my golden son and daughter, and you shall be my generals, my winged messengers of death, as we sweep across Middle Earth!"

As she spoke, Eowyn’s hand missed upon the strike of flint on flint. She uttered a vicious, unladylike oath. Legolas took one of the precious stones from her hand and lay it upon the floor, placing the wick of the bottle over the bottom flint.

"Strike true, Eowyn," he whispered.

And then he screamed. They both screamed, as a crushing mountain of power assaulted their minds with the full weight of Simiasha’s immeasurable malice and hatred of everything that drew breath and walked beneath the Sun. For all her long ages in darkness, the Huntress had begun her existence as one of the Ainur. And though she could not penetrate the barricade of Gandalf’s protective spell, she was more than capable of smashing both their minds to pulp.

"Foolish children," the saccharine voice tittered.

Eowyn lay on her side, her hands clasped over her ears as if to keep her brains from leaking out. It was as though the house of her soul was being slowly crushed inward upon her by brute force, as though barbed hooks were clawing at her, ripping away bleeding chunks of her integral self as they dug toward her center. Beside her, Legolas had ceased wailing and lay on his face, gasping with pain. Simisha was speaking to him, her voice kind and persuasive.

"Let me back in, my love," the Huntress said gently. "Open you sweet self to me and I will let the mortal chit live. Or better, I will let her change and you both may serve me, side by side. She is in such pain! She has been in pain since you first lay eyes on her, tormented by ravishment that went deeper than a mere physical assault. Poor young thing! Did you see how she shrank from your touch in the Pit, curling her arms about herself, shivering away from your desire and her own like a terrified fawn? She is damaged beyond repair. But I could heal her, Legolas. I could take away the memory of the wizardling’s cold hands on her body as he thrust his mind inside her. You had a taste of how terrible that must have been when I broke your will last night. I can heal her, my pet."

"Liar," Legolas half-sobbed. "You are a liar!"

"I can make her immortal," Simisha offered lovingly. "It is not tragic and unfair that her golden hair must fade to gray in less than two score years? For you to want her as you do, she must have pierced you heart like and arrow shot. Can you truly bear to see one so dear to you wither and crumble to dust in another fifty or sixty years while you watch helplessly?"

"Everything you say is twisted half-truth and bile!" Legolas spat, his beautiful voice cracked with pain. "You off slavery and damnation and call it a gift! Die and be damned to the nothingness outside of creation that is reserved for the most evil of souls!"

He took the top flint from Eowyn’s convulsing hand and struck it against

its mate. Eowyn heard her own voice shrieking as the pressure in her head increased. Blood gushed from her nose as something deep inside her skull gave way. She writhed in agony, screaming until her voice broke and died in her throat.

Legolas struck a second time and a blessed spark of red flared in Eowyn’s dimming eyes. He screamed, falling forward upon the smoking wick as Simiasha turned the full force of her mind upon him.

"I will mulch your brains if you dare to raise a hand to me, son of Thrandiul!" She cawed viciously, abandoning all pretense of persuasion. "I will leave you both with no more wit than a pair of babes if you---"

"Die!" He rasped weakly. "Die, and be silent at last!" He managed to roll off the fire bottle and Eowyn saw that the smoldering tap wick had finally caught. Somehow, Eowyn moved her right arm and flicked the bottle with her fingers. It rolled forward, burning steadily now, and tumbled into the crypt with a rattling, metallic clink.

"No! NO!!! You cannot! You---"

The explosion was the most satisfying noise Eowyn had ever known. It shook the stone beneath them, bringing dust and stone grist down on them from the cavern ceiling. The rumbling went on, rising in strength with the shrill mental wails of rage and pain from the crypt. "No! No! No! You cannot! I am eternal! I am the greatest power that yet walks the earth! I cannot die, you fools! Noooooooo!"

"Burn, you monstrous bitch," Eowyn wheezed weakly. She pushed up on one elbow and rolled the last two fire bottles into the maw of Simiasha’s sepulcher. The detonations sent a column of smoke upward from the hole. The trembler went on unabated. The mountain was quaking all the way down to its foundations in the deep earth.

"You will die with me, wretched children!" The monster in the deep howled. Eowyn could see her in her mind’s eye, wreathed in flame, her façade of beauty burnt away as she writhed in her burning tomb. "Even if you escape, you shall never be free of me! You are stained, bound in blood to my darkness for all eternity!" And incredibly, she began to laugh, a high, mad cackle. "Even if I die, I will live on in you, my darlings! You shall still change and be accursed!"

A chunk of stone the size of a dray horse crashed down ten feet from where they lay. Simiasha was going to pull the mountain down around and beneath them.

"Legolas!" Eowyn gasped. She clawed her way to her knees, almost falling over him. He was half conscious, breathing shallowly. She put her head under his shoulder and wrestled him to his feet. He helped her as much as he was able. They ended up leaning heavily upon each other, neither of them standing under their own power.

"Out!" He said faintly.

"Yes," she muttered. She guided them in a meandering path across the chamber toward one of the burning shafts of sunlight that pierced the gloom of the Temple. All around them, the crumbling ceiling rained down death. Miraculously, not even a pebble struck them as they staggered toward freedom, one agonizing step at a time. They reached the chink in the outer wall and Eowyn stood staring in dumb amazement as the fissure crumbled, creating a door-sized gap in the stone side of the mountain. Beyond lay blinding, searing daylight.

"The Valar make a way," Legolas sighed.

They leapt together into the blazing light of day.

They fell in a blind, burning terror, tumbling head over heel over head, down the sheer side of the mountain. They crashed to the red, dusty ground, scraped and bruised by the half-mile drop, but otherwise unharmed.

Eowyn covered her head with her arms and shrieked. Her skin was on fire. Her blood was boiling in her veins. She held a hand before her face and saw with horror that steam was rising off her flesh. Simiasha had spoken the truth. Dead or alive, she had damned them with her blood and now the Sun was killing them as surely as if they were fully changed. Dimly, she heard Legolas’ voice speaking to her. She felt a weight pressing her down, covering her. Something heavy was draped over her, blocking the full force of the Sun. She closed her eyes, lacing her fingers though Legolas’ and waited to die.

They did not die. They did not burst into flame. They lay at the base of the shattering mountain in an endless, blistering torture of pain without end. She screamed, though her voice was gone. She screamed until she knew her throat had cracked and bled. And still it was not over. How long it went on, she never knew.

But at long last, the white blaze of day dimmed. The shadows had lengthened, but the Sun had not passed behind the western peaks. She lay for a long time, dazed, in a slowly receding tide of pain.

She rolled over, gently pushing Legolas’ inert body off of hers, staring up at the soot-smeared sky. The mountain was slowly, very neatly, falling in upon itself. It was still belching smoke in a dozen places. The fire would be visible for a hundred leagues in every direction. And more, the slow cave in of the mountain itself was hurling sand and stone hundreds of feet into the air, turning high noon into cloudy twilight.

She held her hand out again and shuddered with horror. She was swollen and blistered. Her skin was a mass of deep, red, smoking flesh burns. She should be dying, but even as she watched the burns were already healing themselves. "You will never be free of me," Simiasha had mocked them.

Eowyn glanced down at Legolas and shook her head in tired denial. She was too numb for sorrow. He was burned. Every exposed inch of his skin was blackened as though he had been charred over a roasting spit. He had lain on top of her, shielding her from the brunt of the Sun’s rays. And all the while, as she howled her agony until her throat bled, he had never made a sound. He was healing slowly, just as she was, but he was far more injured.

They had to find shelter. They had to flee the foot of this mountain before its final death throes buried them in a rockslide. She leaned down and kissed Legolas’ cracked, blistered lips. "You bore me out of the fire and held me up every time I stumbled," she thought. "I will carry you away from this burning grave."

She lifted him awkwardly, wrestling his unwieldy dead weight over her shoulder. She did not stop to think that she should not have been able to do this so easily. She did not want to know or understand why she was still imbued with inhuman strength. She stared straight ahead and began to walk westward, away from the Crags. She trudged forward, placing one foot in front of the other, not thinking or remembering. She did not think about how life and healing had only seemed to flow back into her body after the Sun had been shrouded in ash and dust. She did not think about the pain she felt now, or puzzle over why her great strength was renewing itself so quickly, or question that she could feel her body shoring up her wounds a little faster with each degree the Sun dipped toward the West. She did not recall the dying curse the Huntress had hurled at them---the promise that she and Legolas would never be cleansed of her stain even if they slew her.

When the effort of not thinking about any of these things grew too much, she quickened her pace. And when that was not sufficient to blank her mind she began to run.

The reddish sand and scrub of the Dustlands blurred beneath her feet. She ran like a wild horse tearing across the plains of the North. She carried her companion as though he weighed nothing. She ran until the soles of her boots peeled away, until each breath burned her chest like fire. She ran until the dry earth gave itself over to green and the scent of water filled the air like a breath of salvation. She collapsed, blind, burned and bleeding, falling backward into glittering fields of blue.

***********************************************************

She woke wet, feeling sweet, deliciously cool water coating her skin. A light warm wind tugged at her damp hair. She stretched, reveling in the simple, wondrous absence of pain.

She was lying on the pebble-strewn edge of a stream and the cool current was flowing over her body. Her head lay just out of the water, cradled on the firm grass of the bank. She had been very lucky, she realized, to have fallen backward in her swoon. Had she fallen forward she would have drowned.

She lay listening to the night sounds around her, hearing, feeling the teeming pulse of life from every direction. She examined her hands and face for burns. There were none. She felt warm and whole and---

Legolas---

She tried to sit and failed, flailing about awkwardly with a little splash. A warm hand passed over her brow, trailing through her soaked hair and easing her back to calm. He had been sitting directly behind her on the bank. He lifted her gently, sitting her upright before him so that her back was leaning against his chest.

"I think you are clean enough now," he murmured against her hair. "You were covered in blood and dirt and unnamable filth. I held your nose and dunked you quite a few times, then I lay you in the water to soak a while."

"Thank you for that," she sighed, going limp against him.

"It was not a chore," he said. "We both smelled very bad."

She did not speak for a while, enjoying the feel of water threading through her toes. She had run the soles of her boots off and the sturdy leather tops had fallen away in tatters soon after, leaving her barefoot. "My feet were bleeding shreds," she said slowly. "Our flesh was scorched black by the Sun. We were both a mess of wounds and bruises. Now, we are healed." She uttered a sad, sorrowing noise of utter defeat. "We are still changing. Still fouled. Either she spoke truth when she said we would not be free upon her death, or she still lives."

"Or," he said softly, "it will take time for the poison of her blood to clear our bodies. Like the venom of a spider bite, its effects will dissipate in time, after it works its way out of our system. We can know nothing so soon after escaping the Nest."

"And we did escape," she agreed, beginning to relax again. "Come what may, we are free. We are free of that place."

Neither of them spoke for a very long time. The summer breeze was warm and the water rushing over her bare feet was heavenly. They were sitting beneath the arms of a great willow that fanned out above them, filtering the brilliant, silver face of the moon and the glittering array of stars. Legolas was propped against the willow’s truck. The steady rise and fall of his chest against her back began to lull her into a dreamy half-dose.

A light tremor passed through his body, rousing her. Then another. She turned, twisting around at the waist, and saw that he was weeping silently. She did not bid him cease. Sweet Eru, how she wished she could cry with him! She wrapped her arms around his chest and he lay his head upon her shoulder, pouring out his grief in silent, wracking sobs.

"If he can see us from where he is now," she whispered, "he is cheering and hailing you the hero of the age for having destroyed the Nest."

"Nay," he said, laughing softly through his tears. "He is berating me for a weepy Elvish fool. He would not want me to mourn him so. But I shall. For all of time. I am the only child of my parents, but Gimli was my brother in all things except blood. I loved him more than my own life. I knew I must lose him one day, but---but not so soon!"

She knew no words that would comfort such a loss, so she said nothing. She only held him as the grief he had been swallowing poured out of him, growing spent and quieter as dawn approached.

"You saved me," he said softly, teetering on the edge of sleep. "So strong….I am in awe of you."

"I do not feel strong," she said drowsily. "And I did not save you. Though perhaps we saved each other."

"The memory of how she pushed herself into my soul---" He broke off, his body trembling in her arms. "It would have killed me, Eowyn. As surely as if she had used my body for her pleasure. But when I took your blood, it seemed you gave me a piece of your soul. I could feel you all throughout my being, young and bright and fearless and full of mortal resilience and strength that my people cannot hope to equal. I can still feel you. It is as though you are a part of me. You gave me your strength and---and now…." He fell asleep in the middle of a word.

And so they slumbered together upon the creek’s banks, nestled beneath the willow’s shade as the Sun rose. She woke once, nearly blind in the yellow glare of sunlight and felt a moment of elation and perfect joy. The shafts of Sun shooting through the thick bows of the willow hurt her eyes, but they did not burn her.

On the eve of their second night of freedom, she woke to the sound of Legolas’ voice, soft in the distance, raised in a song of sweet, heart-broken sorrow. She lay warm and dry upon a goose down sleeping pallet, stretched out before a guttering fire in the stone hearth of what looked to be a little Sabadi cottage. The rice fields to the east of Rhunballa City in the Deep Wells area were dotted with dozens of such houses.

She was bundled in a light woolen blanket. Before her on the floor lay a light silk shirt and lamb’s wool trousers. She rose shakily and peeled off her tattered clothing, dressing slowly, listening to the beautiful strains of Legolas’ song. It was a mourning dirge, she knew, though she did not understand the Elvish words. She felt her eyes sting.

It was a song for Gimli.

She opened the sliding wooden doors of the hearth room, passing through the welcoming chamber to the front door. She emerged into the misty twilight and wove her way through the green forest of man-high water fronds and into a bamboo grove. The wood was a shadow-dappled wonderland of color and sound and it was teeming with life. The night was alive with thousands of animals, all vibrant, all beautiful. The stars hummed a ghostly harmony to Legolas’ song, but they dimmed in comparison to the luminous creature that sang by the water’s edge.

He was clad in a soft clean linen shirt and breeches he must have found in the deserted farmstead. He stood straight as an arrow, eyes closed, head cast back. He shone like a lamp in the fading light, fey and luminescent, like some fantastical dream made flesh. She stood and watched him, rapt and breathless with wonder, as he cast his grief into the night air, making of it something indescribably beautiful. He opened his eyes, sensing her presence, and met her gaze with the incandescent amber eyes of a cat.

Her heart slammed to a frozen halt in her breast and she screamed. In denial. In grief. In cheated rage that, after having fought so hard, they should receive this damnation as a reward.

"Eowyn?" He spoke softly. The glorious, beautiful sorrow on his face had been replaced with confusion and terrible worry.

She wheeled and fled.

She tore through the bamboo break, fleet as a deer, sprinting toward the little house. There would be a weapon somewhere inside, if only a kitchen knife. Somewhere she would find something she could wield to end his life and her own. Before they changed. Before the hapless folk who had lived here returned. Before she and Legolas awoke cold and unbreathing, to an existence of never-ending night.

He tackled her from behind and they crashed to the soft ferny carpet of the forest floor. "Eowyn!" He cried, trying to wrestle her around to face him, but she swung her fists at him wildly. He planted both knees on her forearms when she would not cease flailing at him in blind panic. "What is wrong?! What has happened?!"

He was still himself. His skin shone like pale marble in the moonlight. His eyes, peering down at her with concern and fear, were the golden hue of a predator. But his was still---

"Your eyes!" She cried, gasping. She collapsed upon her back, hyperventilating, trying to quash the panic that was still tearing around inside her, deaf to reason.

"Aye," he said quietly. "Yours were the same when you woke last night. They have changed again because you are afraid. It has to do with mood, I think. Any extreme emotion induces the shift to gold. It is very strange."

"Strange?" She repeated in a strangled voice. She began to laugh weakly, feeling light-headed. "I suddenly feel very foolish."

He edged back, moving off of her nearly numb arms. She sat slowly and he watched her closely from where he knelt beside her, worry still etched upon his fair face.

"Your fear is well-founded and not foolish in the least," he told her.

"Legolas, look at me," she said softly. "How do I seem to you? Would anyone who ever knew us look upon us now and see a pair of monsters?" Her hand flew to her mouth as though she feared a scream would emerge.

"Shh!" He moved closer, laying one hand on her cheek. His eyes pierced into hers with an all-seeing intensity that made her want to turn away. He was---he was looking inside her, she knew, with his Elvish sight. "You are golden-eyed," he told her slowly. "Your skin glows like liquid mithril in torchlight. I think you may now have the strength of a score of Men combined. But your spirit is untainted! I can see it, meleth-nin! Your soul still blazes in my inner sight so brightly I am almost blinded by it pure, fierce beauty!"

"So does yours!" She said, her voice breaking. "But---but, Legolas, I may go mad waiting to know if we are still changing! If we are, we must end our lives---"

"No!" He spoke so sharply she jumped. "No, Eowyn, no," he said again, softer. "Promise me you will not take the one life Eru gave you! Not---not unless we are both agreed there is no hope."

"But---" She began. "But if we---"

"Please," he begged softly. "Please. I cannot bear the constant fear that I may turn and find you dead by your own hand. I cannot bear it."

She slumped in defeat, knowing the argument was lost. She had no strength to fight the pain in his face and voice. He leaned forward until his forehead touched hers.

"Please, meleth-nin," he implored again. He would not be at ease until he had her oath upon it.

"Not unless we are both agreed," she sighed, all her resistance fading with the faint gust of his breath against her lips. "I swear it."

The coiled tension slowly eased from his body. He did not withdraw or release her. Instead, he gently ran one hand through her hair, tilting her head back. She stared into the shining amber depths of his eyes.

"I could not bear to lose you as I lost Gimli," he said quietly. "Mithrandir told me once, when I was very young, that the deepest, dearest friendships of one’s life will pierce your heart like a lightning bolt from a clear sky---instantly and without warning. That is how it was when I met Aragorn. And though we did not take to each other instantly, that is how it was with Gimli. That is how it is with you."

"And all of us mortal," she said sadly.

He only smiled. "You are as Eru fashioned you. I remember my father was grieved over my love for Estel and Gimli, knowing I must see them die in the fullness of time. That is the reason the Eldar keep so to themselves---to safeguard our hearts against the pain of loving mortals." He lay his free hand upon her other cheek, so that he was cupping her face in both hands. "But for my part, if given the choice between the grief that must come and never having loved any of you at all, I chose love. Always."

He kissed her, light as a breath of warm summer air against her mouth.

Perhaps he had meant it as a seal of loving friendship. Perhaps, at that moment, he had meant it to convey comfort and affection and nothing more. But as his lips touched hers, the night around them seemed to pause and inhale, as though stunned motionless by the lightning current that passed between them in that single breath they shared. She sank into his arms, letting him wrap himself around her, and he kissed her again and again upon her mouth, her eyelids, her forehead, her cheeks.

He drew back, surveying her flushed face. "I should have asked first," he said critically. "Eowyn, may I kiss you again?"

She kissed his mouth in answer. It was all the permission he needed. He crushed her to him and they hung suspended in a burning, weightless bank of rising heat. At length, he broke the kiss, if only just. His breath was labored and unsteady against her lips.

"We should---we should---" He shook his head almost imperceptibly. "I cannot think what we should do. I can barely think at all."

She laughed softly at this, her voice shaky, and threaded her fingers through the bright silk of his hair.

"Wiser heads than mine would council forbearance." His voice was a soft husk of hot breath. "But if we are still---still infected, I do not wish to go to Mandos never having held you, never having---" She stopped his words with another kiss, and neither of them spoke again of turning back.

Thereafter, she could never piece together a clear moment by moment recollection of that night. The single coherent thought that played and replayed in her mind was that this was real. It was real and not a dream. It was Legolas.

She remembered that his bare skin felt like living silk drawn over hard muscle beneath her hands, though she could never say how and when he shed his clothes and her own. The smooth slide of naked flesh upon flesh, his and hers, was a wordless, thoughtless blaze of sensation as they lay upon the green forest floor wrapped in each other’s arms.

She vaguely recalled murmuring a faint little protest when he lay upon his back and set her above him, for it seemed terribly strange that she should lead in this. And to that he only laughed softly, telling her that here the blind led the blind. He set his hands upon her waist and drew her down into a kiss, murmuring into her hair that he was a selfish wretch who only wished to free his hands the better to touch her. And touch her he did. He explored the whole of her, every curve and valley, every inch of her, smiling with sweet pleasure as they learned together what response he could elicit if he pressed here, if he caressed there. And as any lingering vestige of shyness dissipated in a searing wave of rising desire, she did likewise to him. They clung together, and it was as though their bodies, of their own volition, began to gently strive against each other in a slow, rhythmic dance as old as time, leaving them poised to melt into a perfect fit.

This is real, she thought again, gazing down at him, without a shred of fear or dark memory. Legolas eyes were brimming pools of light. His face was open and beautiful and so full of unaffected wonder and sweet desire for her and her alone. His whole heart was in his gaze, laid with absolute trust at her feet.

She held his eyes, and they moved together, breaking the barrier within her body in a single swift movement, pushing through and past the doorway of her innocence and his. She made a soft, sharp noise at the tearing pain that was both sweet and agonizing.

He froze, still as a statue, his eyes wide with concern, his heart hammering against hers. "I have hurt you."

"It is pain that must be born," she said in a low, shuddering whisper. "It is only this once."

She rocked against him, a small experimental flex of her hips. He gasped and moaned softly. She smiled down at him. She moved again, watching his face, his eyes, how he shook as though he was in the grip of a rising fever each time she rose and fell above him. The pain, the deep inward driving sensation of being pierced to her very core, never abated completely. But it came hand in hand with a feeling of warm, full completion, and the flame of her desire, banked only briefly by the pain, rekindled and roared to life within her.

She lost any semblance of thought after that. They moved together in a gentle, maddening rhythm, and it seemed his heart fell into synch with hers. Each breath was drawing her a little closer to some dizzying summit. He was speaking to her, his voice soft and broken, his cheeks damp with tears, saying her name again and again like a prayer. Something was gathering in her chest, her stomach, her loins, her heart. Something was building behind her eyes, a pressurized volcano ready to crack then protective mantle of the shield she had woven around the deepest, most vulnerable pieces of her integral self. She had felt this in the Pit as she pulled her clothing on in shamed horror, when she had feared she had taken unforgivable liberty with him while they were in the haze of Simiasha’s forgetful poison. It was that bursting-at-the-seems feeling of too much emotion denied release for too long.

"I love you," Legolas said softly, his beautiful voice choked with emotion. "I love you, Eowyn."

A sob caught in her throat and her entire being, body mind and soul, shouted with joy at the sound of those words. She broke apart, every wall and barricade shattering upon the tidal wave of pleasure that lashed through and over her, sweeping everything away upon its crest. She heard him cry out her name, every muscle in his frame pulled taught, his back arched like a bent bow, as he followed her.

When she regained enough cohesive thought to know anything at all, she found he had drawn her down into his arms. He kissed her once more, a soft, warm brush upon her lips. "I love you, Eowyn," he said again.

And Eowyn began to cry.

She wanted to tell him that she was not weeping for what they had just done. She wanted to tell him that he had just given her the sweetest, most precious gift of her life. But once the floodgates burst open, she could do nothing but sob uncontrollably. She wept for her own pain and the crippling scars of what Grima had done to her. She wept for four years of dull, bottled agony. She shed her tears at last for Theodred, for Theoden, for all the friends she had seen slain in the North. She wept at last for the soldiers she had lost at South Pass, for Indassa, for Gimli. She wept with joy that she could at last give all those she had loved and lost their rightful due. She cried tears of happiness and wonder that a man had told her he loved her, and that she could take joy in his arms without shrinking away. And she laughed through her tears when she remembered that he was not a Man at all.

She wanted to tell him all that he meant to her. She wanted to return his words of love. But she could not speak. She could only cry. He seemed to understand this, to know without being told what she needed. So, he did not try to quiet her or stop her tears. He only held her as she cried herself to sleep.

 **************************************************

On the eve of the third night she woke light-headed and exhausted, feeling as though she had sicked up a river of poison. She curled against the warm body that was wrapped around hers, and he woke with a startled cry.

"Legolas!" She held him when he would have drawn away from her with a wail of anguish. "It is all right! We are safe!"

He went limp against her, burying himself in her embrace. His heart was thrumming like a trapped rabbit’s, but his breath became steady as he slowly relaxed.

"I dreamt something terrible," he murmured. "I dreamt I had---I had done something terrible, but I cannot remember what it was!"

"That is the way of dreams sometimes," she said gently. Her throat felt raw from hours of weeping, but she felt a kind of purged peace she had not known in years. "It is no great wonder that you had a nightmare."

"I do not have nightmares," he said, his fair face shadowed with vague horror. "I---Elves dream lucidly, Eowyn. We steer the dream, it does not steer us. And we do not lose consciousness completely when we sleep. Even in the healing sleep we are aware of the world around us. I was unconscious, eyes shut, mind blanked. It was like waking from a drugged stupor!"

"That is how mortals always sleep," she said.

"It came upon me suddenly," he said in a soft, frightened voice. "At dawn."

A chill rippled through her, though she could not say why. "We slept the day through again," she said after a moment. "That is a bad sign."

"Yes," he agreed. "But of---of what?"

She fumbled for the thread of some terrible memory but it slipped from her grasp. "I do not know."

He frowned furiously. "We escaped from---from our enemies. But who were they? Gimli was slain. I remember that. We---there was something we needed to do. Someone we needed to warn about----something."

He was growing increasingly agitated, so she kissed him. It detoured the troubled path of his thoughts as she had known it would. He lay her down on their bed of green and they spoke no more for a long while.

Later, they rose and bathed in the creek. They found a cache of dried fruits and sweetmeats in the cottage’s little pantry. They did not speak again of half-remembered nightmares of forgotten horrors. They did little all that night other than map and memorize every inch of each other’s skin.

As the stars began to fade toward morning, they lay together before the fire they had built in the farmstead’s little hearth. Strangely, the family’s sleeping pallets were all in this room at the center of the house. There were no windows. The lay side by side in a damp tangle, drying from one last swim in the stream, eyes drooping, limbs growing heavy.

Dawn was near.

"You are smiling," he said, studying her face as though he meant to memorize it for all time. "Even half asleep you are smiling. It is beautiful." This seemed to please him greatly. He tugged at the woolen blanket he had drawn over them, wrapping it a little more snuggly about her. It was strange that they should both feel so chilled in the heat of summer. She had felt perfectly warm until the sky began to brighten toward morning. He ran one hand down her arm and up again to her bare shoulder. "Do you know," he said drowsily, "I think every inch of you is covered in golden, soft downy hair. It is soft as a newborn rabbit’s pelt."

She was fighting to stay awake, but she managed to give him a dangerous glare, narrowing her eyes. "I do not have a pelt."

"Denial cannot undo what is," he said sagely.

She found one last burst of strength and pounced, rolling him onto his back. He stared up at her, feigning innocent surprise. And she kissed him, laughing softly. "I am happy," she said

"That is good," he said softly.

"I feel guilty," she told him, sobering. She ran one hand down his face. "Gimli should be here with us."

He smiled, though his eyes grew overly bright as though they held a faint sheen of tears. "If he were with us right now, he would run screaming into the night. Dwarves are very close-mouthed about matters of the heart and lovemaking. Gimli has---" His voice caught on the word. "Gimli had a terribly low threshold of embarrassment where such things were concerned. A year ago, I invited him to the Midsummer’s festival in Eryn Lasgalen. One of the highlights of that night is always the dance of renewal that is only for wedded couples. It is a very---" Legolas grinned. "---demonstrative dance."

Eowyn began to chuckle, picturing Gimli’s face.

"He sat through the entire ritual with as much decorum as he could muster, but his face was as red as a ripe apple by the end. My father had offered him a seat of honor beside him at the high table---mostly, I think, out of some perverse wish to see if Gimli could watch the revel in its entirety without exploding."

"Did you father---?" She stopped, realizing that the question was perhaps an intrusive one.

"You may ask me whatever you wish, meleth-nin," he said, as though he had read her mind.

"Did he tease Gimli so because he is a Dwarf or because he disapproved of any mortal who had so ensnared your heart?"

Legolas was silent. A little line creased his brow. "My mother was slain when I was twelve years old," he said after a long moment. "That is closer to five in mortal terms, for we grow slower than your folk. I told you when we first met that I had seen the women of my people throw themselves upon the swords of the enemy to shield their children. She---I was that child." How many years had passed since that terrible day she could not imagine. Centuries? Millennia? But the quiet grief was still as raw upon his face as though the wound was new. "My grandfather and my uncle had died at Dagorlad twenty years before I was born. I am my father’s only child and all that is left of his family. And because of these things, he has always been fiercely protective of me."

"And when all of us are gone," she said softly, "it is he who will have to watch you grieve forever."

He smiled through half-lidded eyes. "Gimli has gone on before us. I will keep his memory and my love for him evergreen within my heart. It shall be the same with Aragorn and Arwen and all my dear friends in the Shire." And he sighed, deep and content, as though some heavy burden or fear that had pressed on his mind had been lifted. "But you I will not lose."

"I will age and die, Legolas," she told him gently. "Nothing can change that."

He shook his head. "Mortals move through their lives in an arc of time that rises as they grow to the fullness of their strength, crests for a score of years, and begins a gentle descent towards age and death. When I look upon your folk, I can see them moving forward in that arc. Somehow, you are no longer in motion. Like an Elf, you are rooted in the stream of time and its waters flow around you. It is not possible, yet it is so."

She lay in his arms, enfolded in his warmth and the heat of the little fire in the stone hearth, and felt her blood turn to ice water in her veins. "It is not a miracle," she said weakly. "It is unnatural." Her limbs felt like led. Sleep was pulling her down into its dark embrace as the dawn grew ever closer. She fought it, but it was as though she was a drowning swimmer with an anchor tied to her feet.

He watched the play of apprehensive fear upon her features, and suddenly went stock still as though he had been heart shot with an invisible arrow. "Eowyn! Oh Eru, we are still changing!" His voice was a frightened, insubstantial wisp of shallow breath. He was fading with each passing second, fighting now with all his might to remain awake. "We must not forget again! We must not---" He sighed against her as the strength left his body and consciousness deserted him. Eowyn was sinking fast, a moment behind him, but she lived an eternity of grief and horror in that last minute of awareness as recollection poured over her, and with it, the sure knowledge of their own damnation.

Sweet, mocking laughter, far and dim, sounded in her head and she moaned in horror. "Did you truly think you had slain one of the Ainur so easily, my pets? I have called all my children home to greet your Elessar when he arrives. Olorin’s little spell will only protect you while you still draw breath. When you are cold and dead, I repay you both in full for your betrayal. I will torture you forever, my girl!"

Simiasha lived! She still lived! Eowyn cried out her defiance, her rage, even in the absence of hope. Somehow, some way, she would finish this before her heart stopped and her blood ran cold with dark hunger. They must not forget again! They must not forget!

But they did forget.

They spent all of the next few nights in much the same fashion as they had spent the last. They bathed and ate and talked and labored together to learn every way male and female could please each other. They drifted through those evenings in a state of uncorrupted bliss, free of worry, of care, of any shred of dark memory.

On the eve of their seventh night in the little cottage, they found they had stripped the pantry bare. They went out in search of food. They found only a handful of redberries in the wood and a small vineyard of fall grapes that were still green. They did not worry overmuch that night, but on the following night they woke with hunger gnawing inside their bellies like a ravening wolf.

They ran down four young brown hares and feasted upon them. They did not trouble themselves with cooking their catch. The meat was red and juicy and sweeter than confection. They lay down at dawn, feeling full and satisfied. But by sunset their hunger had returned tenfold.

They hunted together each night thereafter. They sought out larger and larger prey on each successive eve for their hunger continued to grow. The need for food had ceased to be a thing that could be left until after love and bathing. The hunger badgered them, drove them---and if they left it too long or failed to find sufficient game to quiet its demands, it tortured them with knotted cramping agony.

On the tenth night, they came upon a large game animal drinking at the bank of the creek. They chased it a while through the bamboo break and the waterlogged rice fields beyond, making a game of their pursuit until it squealed with terror. They ran their quarry far from their cottage, past the fields and into the grove of cypress that lay beyond. They took to the trees, leaping from branch to branch above their prey so that it could hear their voices but not see them as it ran of its life. For some reason, the beast’s terror seemed terribly funny to her, and she let it slip from her sight a time or three, simply to hear it shriek as she dropped back into view from a branch above. At length, the hunger took hold a little stronger and she moved in upon it, claws unsheathed for the kill.

Legolas leapt forward and plucked her out of the air as she sprang. He held her down, his entire frame trembling with the effort it took not to succumb to the compulsion to attack, to rend, to feast upon the thing they had just run to ground. He restrained her while she fought him mindlessly, writhing in the grip of a hunger pang, as their quarry fled into the night, yowling in terror. Only when their prey was well and truly gone did Legolas release her. He sank to his knees, burying his face in his hands.

She knelt beside him, trying to speak with effort. In the last two days, there were times when words and language deserted them both. She put her arms around him as she shook with silent sobs.

"What?" She managed to ask. "What---bad?"

"It was a Man, meleth-nin," he whispered. "It was a Man we nearly killed and devoured!"’

They made their way back to the cottage in stunned silence. They lay down at daybreak, famished, and woke again at dusk doubling over with the hunger. They found a little herd of small, light-footed red elks and tore them down, drinking up the red fountain of their life’s blood, disregarding the drained meat when they were finished. They were too long at this feast, and there was almost no time for a last cleansing swim in the creek before the approaching Sun began to weigh down upon them. They lay before the fire, stoking its flames high against the oppressive chill that always crept into their limbs as dawn drew nigh. They coupled fiercely in a burning haze of insatiable need. It was as though their ever-growing, all-encompassing hunger had spilled over into every aspect of their beings, so that no appetite of the body could be sated fully.

At dawn, they fell into slumber in the midst of the act of love, sinking downward into insensibility with a gasping sigh of pleasure. With the last of his strength, he breathed one of the only phrases she could still make sense of. "I love you…." He collapsed upon her, wrapped in her arms and legs and the great woolen blanket tangled around them. She smiled in wordless, thoughtless joy, and slept.

A tinkling clatter, like breaking glass, penetrated the deep vale of her slumber. A brilliant flare of light, like a torch lit on the darkest of moonless nights, jarred her to a pain-filled groggy semblance of waking. She whimpered in wordless distress and buried her face beneath the woolen cover until the blinding, burning light faded. She pried her eyes open, disengaging herself from her lover enough to seek out the source of the light. Ten feet from where they lay before the still warm coals in the hearth, lay a tiny sliver of crystalline glass, still glowing like one of the dying embers in the fireplace. She watched it, squinting against the faint light it emanated. After a moment or two, it died away, leaving them once more in cool, soothing darkness, lit only by the glow of the coals in the hearth. She began to drift back into the dreamless realm of sleep.

A shuffle of movement, very close by, and the sudden flicker of another light, brought her back to consciousness with an irritable little snarl. She sought beyond the confines of the hearth room with her hunting sense. And smiled slowly, even in the half-stupor of daylight. The game animals were large and they were many and they were very close. Hunger roared to life inside her as she caught the scent of their sweat, a distant aroma of blood. Some foolish gaggle of herd beasts creeping close to their cottage in search of food while the mistress and master slept. She listened, her stomach rumbling with anticipation, as something fumbled with the latch to the hearth room’s outer door. There were dozens upon dozens encircling the cottage, but four or five were gathered just outside the door in the welcoming room. The herd creatures seemed agitated, as though they were arguing over the wisdom of entering her den.

Wise beasts, she thought.

She listened harder, focusing the full force of her mind upon what was going on in the next room. And slowly, their speech began to make sense to her.

"---then there is no reason to delay!" A young male voice said fiercely. "You said if the Shard we tossed inside did not set them afire, then they are not past saving!"

"My friend," a second Man’s voice, an older baritone mix of gravel and velvet, spoke gently but firmly. "I said they are not lost to hope. But that does not mean they are as they were. You have seen Legolas in battle and you know better that I how very deadly and skilled your sister is in the arts of war. They still live, and so, may be healed of this stain upon their bodies and souls. But they are two of the most dangerous people I have ever known, and at this moment, they are like wild things. If you go tearing in there without care, they will kill you very quickly!"

A heavy sigh, and a little silence followed.

"You saw the state I was in when your Riders found me in the Dustlands, young Horsemaster," another man, a deep, rich voice like warm Sabadi whiskey. "Aragorn brought me back to myself. He knows what must be done and you must trust him in this."

"Yes," said the young Man with quiet anguish. "You were in a terrible state, Master Dwarf. He healed you." He seemed to gather hope from that thought. "He will heal her."

"Mistress!" The velvety voiced Aragorn was calling to someone with a kind air of quiet command. "Do you have the boiling water ready?"

"I have it here, O King," said a young woman’s voice. "And we crush the leave upon it so?"

"Well done, Mistress Fallah," Aragorn murmured. "Stay close, if you will. I will push open the door. Fallah and I will carry the four bowls into the room and set them in a circle around our friends. Eomer, Gimli---" A grim pause, "---use the torches to fend them off if they attack. And Eomer! I will warn you again to keep your wits about you when you see her. Your sister will not hesitate to kill you if you let down your guard."

"I understand, my Lord," was the soft, torn reply.

The door to the welcoming room burst open. Eowyn lay still as a snake in tall grass, waiting patiently as the room blazed with searing torchlight, and worse, the filtered light of the Sun from beyond. The intruders had left her front door standing wide open, she thought angrily. The sound of booted heels entering the hearth room. She lay still as death.

"Oh, Merciful Lady!" Eomer gasped in a rough, bitten-back sob. "They are----this is nothing like Gimli! They are white as bleached bone!"

"Eomer!" Aragorn said sharply. "Do not lower your torch!"

Footsteps all around her. The room was filling with the scent of brewing herbs, of flowers and something that seemed a distillation of nature and every green, growing thing. It smelled like life renewed, like strength and health after a long painful illness. She knew the scent. She had breathed it in once before as she stood upon the threshold of death’s doorway.

"Sister!" Said the one called Eomer gently. "Eowyn, awake!"

He was close, she knew. Almost, but not quite close enough. She raised her head slowly, as though with great effort, though in truth, the herbal brew had warmed her blood and unfrozen her limbs to full wakefulness. But it would not do for them to know that. Not yet. And certainly not until her lover awoke to share in this great bounty of game.

She opened her golden eyes, blinking in the glare of the torch he held. She only needed to draw him a little closer. She met the eyes of the young thing that knelt less than ten feet away from where she and her lover lay. He was fair and ruddy, like a great tawny-haired young lion, and she suddenly felt a chill of distant recognition. All the while, her head was filling with the sweet, wholesome breath of Aragorn’s steaming physic. Her mind felt clear as a bell. Her body felt strong and well. All the better. She would be able to strike quickly.

"She is awake already!" Eomer said joyfully. "Eowyn! Do you not know me?"

She frowned, feeling suddenly confused. She propped up on her elbows, watching as he edged closer, hunger warring with uncertainty. His eyes grew wide as she rose slowly to all fours, the blanket sliding off her moon-pale naked skin. He made to reach out to her, his handsome face anguished, his torch lowered and half-forgotten.

A wave of tearing hunger lanced through her and she growled low in her throat, like a mountain cat warning its young away from danger. She could leap at him so easily. He was so close she could taste him! But---but---she knew that face, those blue eyes! She knew him! She uttered another snarl agonized confusion and wrenching need to sate the hunger.

A flash of movement caught her eye. A small, barrel-chested creature darted forward and pushed the yellow-haired young man back with an angry oath. And behind him, someone threw wide the door, letting in a bright shaft of morning sunlight. Eowyn screamed as the rays touched her bare skin, and Eomer cried out with her.

"She knew me, you fool!" He cried. "Let me go! Let me---!"

"Another inch and she would have torn out your throat!" Gimli said harshly.

Eowyn curled up facedown on the matted floor, moaning with pain, her hands over her head to shield herself from the blazing pain of the Sun. And then, her lover rose, roused finally by the sound of her cries. He tossed a part of the blanket over her to shield her from the Sun and snarled viciously at the intruders, baring his sharp teeth.

"Legolas---!" Gimli said in soft horror.

Legolas crouched over her protectively, growling like a cornered wolf, poised to spring if they ventured any closer.

"Edge back," Aragorn said carefully. "All of you. Keep the torches before you. We have the four pots of aethelas set about their bed. It will do its work. Now we shut the door and wait."

Legolas seemed to sense that the threat was over for the moment, but did not relax his guard until the four interlopers closed the sliding hearth room doors against the hateful daylight and edged back to the far corner of the room to begin their vigil. Only then did Legolas peel back the blanket and turn her gently on her back to face him.

"Shh," he told her gently. "Safe. Safe now, meleth-nin." He leaned down and kissed her, deep and sweet. She sighed and drew him down into her arms, wrapping herself around him.

Distantly, she heard the sound of a little scuffle. "No! No!" Eomer was saying angrily. "He is my friend, and I understand that he is blameless in this matter. I know that. But do not expect me to sit idly by in the same room while the Elf tups my sister!"

"They are not tupping, my Lord," said the woman Fallah in a cool matter-of-fact voice, "They are falling asleep again."

Legolas curled beside her again, wrapped in her arms, and they slept again for a time.

She came back to awareness as she was being lifted and wrapped in a soft woolen cloak.

"In the interest of common decency," Aragorn was saying, "Eomer and Mistress Fallah will tend Eowyn. You and I will see to Legolas."

"Aye, lad," was the gruff reply.

Someone was raising her arms over her head. A soft cotton garment was pulled down over her head while gentle hands worked her hands through the sleeves of a light summer dress.

Dress?

She had not worn a dress in four years. She only owned one and it was grown terribly threadbare. It would be nice to own a pretty gown again, but there was really no time for such things of late, she thought hazily.

"Sister?" Eomer’s voice implored gently. "Eowyn, open your eyes."

Had she been ill, she wondered? Eomer never woke her so kindly for anything. As a rule, she was simply happy that he had outgrown the boyhood habit of bouncing on her bed while screaming, "Wakey! Wakey!"

She opened her eyes to see her brother’s tear-streaked face. He was holding in his arms, rocking her like a child.

"Eomer?" She said hoarsely.

He began to laugh and weep at the same time, crushing her against his chest so tightly she could not breathe.

"My Lord," said a woman’s wry happy voice. "You are squeezing the air out of her."

The vise around her ribs disappeared immediately, and she found herself eye to eye with a ghost. "Fallah," Eowyn whispered. "You---" She frowned, struggling to remember. "You were hurt."

Fallah touched a bandage dressing that covered her head from the hairline upwards. "That concussion should have killed me. Elessar is a skilled healer."

"Leave him be, Gimli," Aragorn said firmly. "It is better to wake them one at a time."

"Gimli," she said softly. The Dwarf’s face came into view and she smiled weakly. She wished she had the strength to hug him. "You are alive...happy….."

Gimli took her hand in his and kissed it. "And I am as happy to see you alive and breathing, lass."

The King of the West knelt before her and took her other hand in his callused fingers. He lay his palm against her forehead. "Your body temperature is back normal. My Lady," he asked then, with infinite gentleness, "What do you remember?"

"I---" She stared back at him in sudden cold horror. "We were taken---they---they---"

It all came crashing back down on her in the space between one heartbeat and the next. She began shaking, her eyes filling with too many tears over too many horrors and pains to number. She began to sob, low, wracking and hoarse. She turned her head away, burying it in her brother’s broad chest. She wanted to hide from the memory and horror of what they had seen and suffered. Most of all, she wanted to purge the memory of that poor man who had wailed like a small child as they chased him, their voices echoing through the mist-shrouded rice fields with bright, cruel laughter. Aragorn turned her back to face him, not allowing her to hide from her shame.

"We---there was a Man," she confessed in agony. "We---we tried to---" She broke off, sobbing brokenly, trying to untangle her garbled memories of the last three or four days. "Did---did we---?"

"You did not kill him," Aragorn told her gravely. "You stopped yourselves at the last moment, he told us." Her cupped her chin in his big hand and raised her head when she would have curled into herself in a knot of misery and self-loathing. "You and Legolas are not responsible for anything you have done, my Lady. You escaped from that den of monsters, and if I am not much mistaken, set it to burn before you left. Blessed Lady, Eowyn! The two of you pulled the whole mountain down upon them! If one of the lesser beasts managed to survive I would be very surprised. You have much to be proud of!"

"The queen lives," Eowyn said. Her voice sounded so raw and weak. "I have heard her mocking us in my mind. It is you she wanted. She took us---lured Legolas and Gimli here through Haradoun---to bait you into coming here. Her children are scattered from here to Emyn Muil, but now she has called them home. Aragorn! They are coming for you! Simiasha---we burned her horribly, but she was once one of the Ainur, she told us. She wants you!"

Aragorn’s face was set in a hard, angry line. "I do not kill easily," he told her calmly.

"She does not want to kill you," Eowyn said. "She wants to change you. She wants you to be her Captain as she covers all of Middle Earth with her kind. She---she---" It was too much effort to speak further. Eowyn collapsed back into Eomer’s arms, wheezing with exhaustion. But Aragorn’s face had a peculiar look to it, one that she suddenly recognized as fear in a man unaccustomed to the feeling. Like Legolas and herself, he did not fear death, but the threat of being dragged screaming into this darkness froze his blood. And it was not a possible danger he had even considered when he set out to rescue his friends.

"Can you heal us?" She asked in a quavering voice, hating how weak she sounded, how ill and frightened. "She told us there was no hope while she lived. They---they forced us to drink! They---they---" She broke down again, feeling a fool in some detached back corner of her mind, but completely unable to stay the tears. It was as though now that she had regained the ability to shed tears, she no longer had any means of controlling impulse of weep. Eomer kissed her forehead and Gimli squeezed her other hand gently.

"I cannot cure you while she lives," Aragorn told her softly. "Not completely. But I can reverse the change to a point and stop its progression in its tracks indefinitely. The cure of painful."

"I do not fear pain," she said quietly.

"So you told me long ago," the King said with a faint smile. "And you have shown courage since that say to shame the bravest heroes of history." He set a clay cup before her and poured it full of the aethelas brew. He held the cup to her hands and she took it in an unsteady grip. He met her eyes and she nodded. "Drink, Eowyn. Drink and walk in the Sun again."

Holding his iron gray eyes as though they were her only lifeline to salvation, she set the cup to her lips and downed it in three huge gulps. He quickly poured it full again. She drank as swiftly as she could, having some terrible inkling of what was to come.

It was like nothing she could have foreseen or imagined. The pain struck suddenly. It shot through her every nerve ending, robbing her of breath for a few seconds. Then she screamed. She wailed in agony, writhing in a torment that went on and on. She felt as though she were at the base of the Crags, burning alive again. Only this time, the fire was deep inside her as well. It was so far beyond being seared by the Sun after their escape from the Nest the former seemed almost pleasant be comparison. She rode it out, shrieking until she thought she would go mad, praying for unconsciousness, praying for anything that would give her relief.

Little by little, it eased up enough so that she could think again and take note of her surroundings. There was a struggle going on nearby. She heard Legolas’ voice raised in anger and the strained breath of Aragorn and Gimli as they tried to restrain him.

"You will not hurt her!" Legolas cried. "You will not hurt her again!"

She wanted to go to him, to hold him, but the razored claws of the pain tore into her again, as another wave, as terrible as the first, struck her and left her wailing in agony. But still, somehow, she managed to thrust one hand out toward him, though she was unsure now as to whether she sought comfort or offered it. Eomer took the hand and clasped it in his own, as though forbidding her to intrude upon the tussle that was going on a few feet away.

"Do not touch her!" Legolas screamed. "Do not---!" The sound of a blow, short and sharp, and Legolas’ breath sighed out of his chest. Through the bleary haze of pain that had began to dim once again, Eowyn saw that he had fallen back into Gimli’s arms. The Dwarf’s face crumbled with sorrow for his friend’s torment. Legolas was still conscious, breathing shallowly. His eyes were dim with confusion and fear, as though he wandered though a nightmare vale of delirium.

"Oh, my friend," Gimli said, his deep voice laden with the unsteady rumble of banked tears. He swept Legolas’ tangled golden hair back from his face, his own visage as grim and loving as a father grieving over a dying child. "That they have done this to you, of all people! You who loved light and the sight of the Sun on the green leaves of your forests!"

"Gimli?" Legolas touched the Dwarf’s face with confounded wonder. "Gimli, how is it that your spirit has come to Mandos?"

"We are not in Mandos, you fool Elf!" Gimli said with a short bark of laughter. "I am alive and so are you. I leapt off the mountainside thinking I would shortly be feasting in the Halls of Aule and bragging to my fathers of my exploits." He snorted. "No such glorious ending for me, I fear. I struck the ground headfirst and woke a day later, half-delirious with the god of all headaches. I wandered the Dustlands for several days before Aragorn’s scouts found me half dead of thirst." His voice darkened. "Though by that time, water was no longer what I craved to slake my thirst."

"Mellon-nin," Legolas said hoarsely. "I am glad to see you again!"

And the Dwarf growled in feigned outrage as his friend embraced him weakly, mumbling ‘Foolish Elf’ under his breath as he patted his friend’s back with awkward affection.

"Aragorn?" Legolas said, his eyes focusing upon his other friend with effort. "How---" He broke off with a gasp of fear. "Eowyn! Where is she? Where---?"

"She is right here, my friend," Aragorn said gently.

"Eowyn?" Legolas said softly.

She sought to clear her blurred sight and her spinning head as his face peered down at her. He touched her cheek uncertainly, and as always, at the simple touch of his hand, the crippling pain eased again to something almost bearable. He was dead pale, his luminous beauty dulled, his eyes hollow and dim. But her heart contracted at the fear, the sorrow, and worst of all, the terrible apprehension that poured off of him in waves. He seemed to be searching his fragmented memories of the last two weeks, trying to piece together a cohesive narrative. She watched his face silently, her heart shriveling to a cold stone of fear in her breast. She saw his face change as he found the bulk of his recollection. He swallowed slowly and his presence radiated a sense of twisting shame and sorrow that made her want to sob with despair. He was watching her face as intently, as though he was trying to read her thoughts.

He had remembered everything, she thought numbly. He had recalled all that had passed between them with horrible clarity and it filled him with shame and regret. With horror at the way they had rutted like animals in heat. She had---she had taken from him his perfect purity, the innocence and the first act of love that he should have laid at the feet of some beautiful Elvish bride like the priceless treasure that it was. And now, when he looked upon her he would never never never feel anything but grinding remorse for all that they had sullied in each other as they sank into darkness.

She choked, as grief more raw and terrible than she had ever know, tore at her insides. And at the same instant, another wave of agony, the pain of the aethelas tea purging her blood of Simiasha’s poison, ripping though her body again, robbing her of speech. She turned her face into her brother’s broad chest with a broken wail of loss and agony.

"Eowyn!" Legolas’ voice, like sorrow incarnate.

"Do not touch her!" Her brother said harshly. "You have done quite enough of that already!"

Legolas made a soft noise, a sharp little exhalation of breath, as though her brother had just shoved a dagger into his heart.

Eowyn sobbed in weak, cracked little hiccups, blessing her receding consciousness as a brief respite to sorrow. Her last waking thought was that she wished she could die.

 *****************************************

She wandered at times in a haze of semi-conscious agony, never waking fully, unable to speak or form a coherent thought. She knew her brother was near and that she was dreadfully ill. Fallah was often at her bedside, though sometimes her face bled into a memory of Eowyn’s mother. The pain rolled in and out like a sea tide. Sometimes it was only a low burn of agony, the next hour she would hear herself shrieking and begging Eru aloud to let her die, to make it stop.

Aragorn came and left many times. His presence was like a bonfire beside the smaller glowing candles of Eomer and Fallah’s spirits. Only when he spoke to her could she make sense of anything beyond her immediate torment.

"It is too soon to rouse her," she heard the King telling someone in a quiet, tense voice, as he lay one hand on her sweat-soaked brow. "She will wake soon, perhaps tonight. But I cannot risk her life as well by waking her completely until her fever breaks. As terribly as she is suffering, it would be tenfold were she wide awake to bear the full brunt of this malady. The pain alone could stop her heart or burst the channels of blood in her brain."

"Aye," Gimli said with a shudder in his voice. "I remember. Even now, I try to remember how bad it was when you purged my blood in this fashion and my mind shrinks back from the memory. And I was not so far gone as they are. But Aragorn! He is barely breathing! He will not live through the night unless she comes to him."

A little silence.

"The change was warping him against the bent of his very nature, my friend," Aragorn said quietly. "We cannot be certain his belief is entirely unfounded."

"I can!" Gimli said with harsh finality. "If he were drowned in a well of darkness ten thousand years he could not have hurt her so!" The Dwarf paused a moment before continuing. "And besides---what passed between them did not see its beginning in the Nest. It was brewing since they first clapped eyes on each other, I think. When we came to Rhunballa, I could see what was happening even if they themselves were blind to it. I only hope this nightmare does not poison all that might have been good between them."

She drifted away upon an ocean of pain and heard no more.

 *********************************************

Eowyn opened her eyes to yellow sunlight streaming through the open window of her own guest bedchamber in the Royal Villa of Rhunballa. She felt lighter than air, euphoric to be blessedly, peacefully free of pain. Her entire body felt as though it were one great bruise, but these aches were nothing compared to what she had known. Henceforth, for all that remained of her life, she would redefine the word pain and every hurt or illness would fall short of this new definition.

Aragorn was sitting beside her, one warm rough hand clasping hers.

"Can you hear me, my Lady?" He asked quietly. "Do you know who I am?"

"Aragorn," she said. Her voice sounded as though she had swallowed a mouthful of gravel.

"Eowyn," the King said without any preamble, "I must ask you some intrusive and intimate questions and I ask you forgiveness, but time is our enemy in this. Legolas is dying."

Her breath caught in her throat. It seemed her heart had seized up in her chest. "No," she rasped. "Is he---still changing? Is---is he---?"

"Eowyn," Aragorn asked gently. "Did you and he become lovers before the worst of the change began to effect your minds? Or was it a mindless bestial thing born of the poison in your veins? Please, you must answer me quickly and with complete honesty!"

"I---" Her chest caught in a little sob. "I was in my right mind those first few nights. I---I thought he was as well." She breathed in deeply, trying to steady her voice. "The first night after we escaped---we were embracing, and then we were kissing, and then we---we---" She began to cry in earnest now. "He told me he loved me again and again. I thought it was real."

"You were not unwilling?" Aragorn asked intently.

"Is that why he is dying now?" She asked hopelessly. All her tears had dried up. Some things were too terrible, so far beyond the simple expiation of weeping that tears would not suffice. "When you woke us I felt his---his horror and grief over what we had done. It he dying because he has remembered himself and it is as though I used him as Simiasha wished to?"

"No!" He put one arm behind her back and raised her limp body off the bed. "After you lost consciousness, he went mad. He fought us when we tried to give him the aethelas tea. We had to restrain him and pour it down his throat. He wailed nonsense after that and woke from the fever a day ago. He began to fade almost instantly. He says after you were together, he remembers that you began to wail as though your heart were torn from you breast. When we woke the pair of you, he could think of nothing but that. And when you turned from him with such a cry of anguish, it seemed to confirm what he feared. He thinks he ravished you."

"No!" She leapt from the bed and her legs buckled. Aragorn caught her lightly, hefting her up in both arms. "Take me to him!" She said.

Aragorn was already moving. He carried her out of the guest chamber and the white walls of the Villa blurred by as his long legs bore her to their destination. He kicked open the door to another bedchamber and strode across the room, setting her upon the bed.

Legolas was lying in old King Udam’s great bed, his eyes open and fixed upon nothing. His skin was pale as death, dull of its natural radiance. He barely seemed to be breathing. Aragorn set a light kiss upon her brow and gave her hand a quick, hard squeeze. "Do not let him depart, my Lady! Bring him back to us."

She leaned forward, stretching out beside his still body. He did not stir or seem to notice her presence. She put her arms around him and kissed his lips lightly. Her eyes filled with tears as he blinked and sobbed softly. His eyes, hopeless and welling with boundless sorrow, met hers.

"I am sorry," he said in a soft, dry rattle of a whisper. "Forgive---"

"Legolas," she said gently. She kissed him again, long and deep and full of every loving word she had not had the courage to utter, even in the forgetful thrall of the change. It was her fault that he had misconstrued her reaction on waking. She had never said the words. Not once. And he had repeated them a thousand times in less than a fortnight.

"I love you," she said softly. "You took nothing that was not freely give with all my heart."

He regarded her with weak wonder, with hope unlooked for gathering in his eyes. He breathed in and out, a long deep breath, like a man withdrawing from the edge of a precipice from which he had nearly jumped. He inhaled again, stronger this time, still almost too weak to speak.

"I wept after we loved that first time because I was healed," she murmured, stroking his face. His cold skin had warmed noticeably under her touch. "And once I began to weep I could not stop. I felt your shame and regret when Aragorn woke us, and I thought all that we had shared must have been only the change acting upon you. I though I had hurt you and---"

He moved so quickly she squealed with surprise. He covered her mouth with his and wrapped her in his arms, squeezing the air from her lungs. Dimly, she heard quiet footsteps and the clink of a door latch, the sound of Aragorn leaving the room.

She relaxed against him, withdrawing from their kiss to look down at him. She gazed into the azure depths of his eyes, watching with wonder as the color and light and life seemed to flow back into his face. The wound to his spirit that had severed him from his innate vitality was healing itself as she looked on. He still seemed terribly weak, but that had more to do with the physical ordeal of Aragorn’s cure.

"You love me," he mused, his voice barely above a breath. He shifted onto his side, pulling her with him. "You love me," he sighed again. He smiled like warm summer sunshine on her face, and her stomach flip-flopped as though she was a little maid with a first crush. She lay gazing in wonder into his face, amazed she had never once taken in the perfect beauty of him with a woman’s appreciation. But then, she had been dead to all such yearnings until Morsul’s blood had reawakened desire in her body. She wondered if the erstwhile Knight of Doriath had found his way at last to Mandos. Somehow, inexplicably, she was sure that he had.

They rested together in easy content silence, basking in the absence of pain, each lost in the warm glow of the other’s presence. Neither felt compelled to examine or weigh the consequences of this new wonderful bond of feeling.

Eowyn was the first to break the spell. "What will happen now?" She wondered aloud, her brow creasing with worry.

"The Huntress lives still," he murmured gravely. "I do not need to tell you that."

"We were very naïve to think we had slain her so easily," Eowyn said. "We will not need to seek her out. She has called her children home from far afield. She will find us soon enough."

"When she does, we must destroy her."

"Well," she said dryly. "That sounds easy enough."

He laughed weakly. "Aye. I was aware of Aragorn and Gimli’s speech while we were ill. He has halted the change in our bodies, but---" He paused, as though considering whether to say more. "Lord Elrond’s texts on the subject are sketchy. But Aragorn fears that, even if Simiasha is slain, we may always be----altered to an extent. We must prepare ourselves for that possibility."

She was silent, trying to take that in. She drew in a long slow breath. "I do not wish to live ‘altered,’" she said with soft finality.

He went motionless beside her as though all the renewed life had suddenly sagged out of him. "Nor would I if the changes were terrible. But, Eowyn---"

She stared into the wrenching worry in his face and felt a twist of guilt. She kissed him lightly. "I must stop threatening to end my life," she said. "If I do it once more, I will furrow worry lines in your brow. I am sorry. I meant to say that I would not except that there is no cure to be found anywhere in this world." She watched as the taught strain eased from his body, as his features relaxed slowly.

"When we are free of this darkness," he told her softly. "I will ask you to avow out union."

"Our---" She broke of as she slowly realized what he meant. Her cheeks began to blush a rosy red. But on the heels of that sweet unadulterated joy, a tightness rose in her chest, that claustrophobic, pressurized feeling of overload, of too much to quickly. He watched her face and seemed to read this as though she had spoken her feelings aloud. "Our union?" She asked in a small voice.

"Among my people," he said slowly, carefully, "the act of love is the sacrament. My folk would consider us wed already. But that is not your way. When we are free of this plague upon our bodies and souls, I will ask you to exchange public vows with me so that the customs of your kin may be satisfied. Do not give me an answer yet. In truth, I would wish to give you a season to consider. There is much involved in spanning the chasm that separates our two kindreds, and more obstacles than you have yet imagined."

"Such as the fact that I will die and leave you to grieve for all of time," she said quietly. Was love enough, weighed against the specter of the sorrow he would carry for all eternity?

"Do not let that sway your decision," he told her firmly. "I will tell you what Arwen told Aragorn when he raised the same objection to their union. The deed is done. I will love you until the stars fade and the physical plain of Arda is swept up in the tides of Eternity. I will grieve when you die, though it is by no means assured I will outlive you. I have ever been the sort to seek out danger. I draw trouble to my doorstep like a loadstone. But whether you consent to share your life with me or not, I will still love you, and grieve when we are finally parted."

"I am sorry," she said, feeling her heart convulse in her chest with conflicting joy and sorrow. "It seems I am always causing you pain in one fashion or another. If I could live forever for you I would."

"And it I could forsake forever for you, I would joyfully renounce it," he said, sad and wistful. "Let us leave the matter there until out futures are assured."

"Yes," she agreed.

She held him a little closer, thinking she preferred the comparative similarity in his frame and her own. Her father, Theoden, Theodred and Eomer---the only other men she had ever embraced---had been large, broad-chested men. Hugging them had been like being embraced by a friendly bear. Legolas was reed slim compare to them, though she knew he housed enormous strength in his lean-muscled form. She rather liked that. They were much the same size, despite his greater height. It was better to feel as though they held each other, rather than being swallowed in his embrace. She ran one hand down his chest, trailing down to his stomach, feeling the taught planes of his body quiver in response to her touch.

"Aragorn will be back in shortly to make sure all is well with me," he murmured thoughtfully. His voice had dropped to a low husk with quiet, intense desire flickering in the depths of his gray eyes.

"He might be damaged irreparably if he came in upon us in the midst of love-making," she murmured. Oh but she wanted him, like a dying man in the desert wanted water. She wanted to wrap herself around his beauty and love him until they were both too spent to move.

"He is made of sturdier stuff than that," Legolas laughed softly. He touched his lips to hers. "You set my head whirling like Dwarvish whiskey. You set my blood to boiling. This desire of the body is like a sweet wine I never imagined or craved. But having tasted it once, I am become a drunkard. And here am I, almost too weak still to bury myself in your sweetness and please you until you cry out with joy."

"Almost?" She asked breathlessly.

"Almost too weak," he replied softly. "But not quite."

In an hour, they would rise and brave the consequences of besieging Hunters, of Simiasha’s looming vengeance, and very probably outraged elder brothers. Eomer, she knew, would still see her as his wayward ward---his to defend, his to command. His to demand satisfaction or a hastily wedded resolution for her honor besmirched, whatever the circumstances. They would learn who, if anyone, now ruled Rhunballa. The would deliver the worst news possible to the city’s people; the news that their nemesis was not slain and was, even now, gathering her forces for an assault.

In an hour, they would face all these tasks and battles. But for one moment, perhaps their last moment of peace before the coming storm fell upon them, they would pretend they were still wandering in the forgetful bliss of those first few nights in the bamboo cottage. They would pretend they were the only two people in the world and their love had no consequences, no barriers, and the inexorable ticking of the finite clock of her life was only so much noise.

 (COMING SOON: The grand finale! No chapter name for it yet, but the first draft is nearly half done!)

The Price of Freedom

By Erin Lasgalen

FORWARD AND WARNINGS : R for content. This story is an AU. With the exception of the first chapter it is set post-ROTK. It will contain heavy violence, the mention of rape though no actual depictions, and sexual content—again, no gory details.

DISCLAIMER: This story was written solely for the purpose of non-profit entertainment. All canon characters and places therein are the property of Tolkien Estates and New Line Cinema.

Author’s Note: This is NOT the last chapter, I fear. Initially, I had intended to post the last two chapters together, but in the interest of posting a little sooner, I give you this penultimate chapter. I have finished the first draft of chapter 6 and expect to have it ready to roll very soon.

THANKS SO MUCH to all the kind people who have reviewed this fic and been patient through an extremely long lag between updates. School and work have beat the author down the last few months. With the last chapter, I will post personal thanks to everyone individually. Now, on to chapter 5.

Chapter 5 --- Night and Madness

Eowyn woke from her warm half dose to the sound of her brother’s voice. She was soaking in a bath of warm, soapy water. She smiled and stretched, a sweet burn of pleasure rolling through her at nothing more than the memory of Legolas’ hands threading through her hair as he sat curled behind her in old King Udam’s bath. He had washed her hair and bathed her with slow, exquisite thoroughness before allowing her to return the favor.

"She is awake," Legolas’ voice drifted in from the adjoining bedchamber, "but she is not yet finished bathing. I would give her a few moments before you enter."

"Would you indeed?" Eomer’s voice said caustically. "I should think you would find nothing strange about viewing my sister naked!"

Eowyn sat up with a wince, wringing the water from her hair. She spied a fresh change of clothing and saw that it was her own; black Sabadi trousers, her linen Captain’s tunic with light leather guard vest. Her vest bore the crest of the house of Rhunballa’s kings, the badge that marked her as Queen’s Guard. She removed the seal and kissed it lovingly. And then she tucked it away for later, along with her grief for Indassa. Fallah must have brought the clothing to the Villa at some point. She eased out of the great iron tub and began dressing hurriedly, listening to the low-key, tense exchange on the other side of the door. Legolas seemed to have declined to answer Eomer’s last comment. As her brother began to speak again after the little silence, she felt her temper begin to rise with each word he uttered.

"Aragorn shall answer to me for locking the two of you in a bedchamber, that even now reeks our your scent and hers, as part of some obscure Elvish remedy! You are not to blame for this dishonor upon her," her brother said this , as though he were fighting for calm. He seemed to be trying to reign in his knee jerk anger and remember that Legolas was a friend who had just suffered a horrific ordeal. "But by Eorl’s bones, you will marry her, Legolas!"

"With joy, my lord," Legolas said without any ire. "We have spoken of this, she and I, and I have set the decision in her hands. If she will have me, I will exchange vows with her in the mortal fashion. I bade her think a while upon the matter, and we have agreed to wait at least until the coming battle is won to speak of it again."

"She will agree," Eomer said firmly. "I shall see to that!"

Eowyn bit back a soft growl of old, too-familiar anger, pulling on her boots with a violent jerk.

"How?" Legolas asked softly.

"What do you mean?!" Eowyn could almost see the scowl on her brother’s face deepen.

"She might have heeded Theoden’s commands," Legolas said, "for he was as a father to you both. But you are a brother and she has not been your charge for several years. In truth, she never was. If you command her to do ought as though she were your chattel to bid wed where and who you desire, she will box your ears."

"She would not---" Eomer broke off and went silent. Then he gave a short little bark of laughter. "Aye. That is true." He sighed heavily, and as he did, seemed to exhale the better part of his unthinking anger. After a moment, he spoke again. "I have endured four years of hearing her sweet valiant name besmirched by the filthy rumors of idle fools, Legolas! This is another bucket of oil cast upon that fire. The soldiers of Gondor and my Riders saw too much at that cottage, and now they are all a-chatter about the two of you. I knocked out the teeth of one of Aragorn’s men this morning when I came upon him speculating to his fellows as to whether the Lady of Rohan would soon bear a half-elven child! I---" He growled, low and angry, like a young bear awakened early from his winter’s sleep.

"She is not with child," Legolas said with complete surety. And upon hearing those words, Eowyn felt a little hitch inside her chest, a strange, incongruous mix of relief and sadness. "Eomer," he went on in a gentle voice. "Speak with her. It is not my place to say, I know, but you and she should reconcile before the coming struggle is upon us. Even in victory, all of us may not live to see tomorrow’s sunrise. It is a perilous time to leave ought unsaid between yourself and one you love so dearly."

"Aye," Eomer agreed, his voice a grave, soft rumble. He sounded very like their uncle in this mood. "Aye. And let us make peace as well, my friend. I---I will be happy to call you brother if we live through this, Legolas!"

She waited, hearing Legolas take his leave quietly, not trusting herself to fling open the bedchamber door that separated her from her brother. She sat in the little chair beside the bath, trying to gather her thoughts, trying to imagine what she was going to say to him. She was a coward, she knew, waiting for him to come to her, but---

The light tap on the bathing room door made her jump. "Sister? May I enter?"

He entered the bath slowly, as though he thought he might spook her if he offered any sudden movement. His beard was fuller, she thought foolishly. It was the only noticeable difference from the picture she had kept lovingly preserved in her mind for four years. The sight of him, standing before her, his big hands clenched with worry for her, with love, with anger and with indecision as to what he should do or say now that they were face to face in the waking light of day broke down all her feeble pretensions of composure.

She flung herself into his arm, sobbing. He returned her embrace with backbreaking strength, his great chest trembling with suppressed tears. They said nothing for several long minutes; they could only hold each other and weep.

"I searched the whole of Middle Earth for you!" He said hoarsely. "I followed every rumor, gave ear to every fool and charlatan who claimed to have heard tale of you. When I set out to this land at Aragorn's side, we began to hear rumors from the Rhunland caravaners and the Laketown tradesmen of a golden-haired Northwoman who commanded the women soldiers of Rhunballa. To have my hope kindled again, only to learn from your shield maidens that you had been taken by those monstrosities was almost more than I could bear. We had not been in the City a day when my scouts came upon Gimli wandering in the Eastward wastelands of this valley. Aragorn had to threaten to tie me to a stump to keep me from riding to your rescue when Gimli recovered his senses and told us that you were alive and still there captive. And then, the Crags, the entire mountain the women of this land call Dhak-Dir, seemed to explode. Smoke and earth darkened the sky for two days, and Gimli laughed and told me they must have made the mistake of angering you."

Eowyn began to laugh weakly.

"We began searching the rubble of the mountain and the Dustlands," Eomer went on, "but we found no trace of either of you. Aragorn preserved my hope, telling me it was more than possible that you and Legolas had escaped the fall of the mountain. And then, a farmer of the Deep Wells village came to us, confessing he had taken to sneaking to his croft just before dusk and helping himself to the possessions of his neighbors. He told us night had caught him out of doors and he had nearly fallen prey to a pair of Hunters. He described both of you in great detail." Eowyn's ribs creaked as he tightened his embrace. "When we found you, it seemed the cruelest joke imaginable that you had destroyed a host of monsters, only to---to---"

"I am myself again," she said softly, gently disengaging herself from his arms. "And Gimli was wrong, there in the cottage. Even in that haze of hunger and darkness, I knew you. I knew my brother and would not have slain him!"

He studied her a moment in silence, heedless of the tears streaking his face.

"Why, Eowyn?"

"Why?" She repeated, though she knew already the gist of his question.

"Why did you leave your people?" His voice was laced with sorrow, but there was anger there as well, now. "Why did you leave me, without so much as a word? You are all that is left of our family. Theodred was dead, Theoden was dead, and you were gone---dropped, it seemed, from the face of Middle Earth. You left me alone, bereft of all those I loved most!"

Each word, half-wounded, half-angered, was like a knife thrust in her breast. She met his eyes, knowing there were no sufficient words of apology for what she had done to him. Elbereth, she wished he would shout and rail at her. The uncomprehending hurt in his dear eyes was more than she could bear. And she could not tell him why. The knowledge of what had befallen her, the fact that she had been enspelled and ill-used under his very nose, would deal him a blow that would never truly heal. She gazed up at him mutely with no idea of how she would answer him.

He spoke first. "Was it Wormtongue, sister?" Eomer asked slowly, his face terrible. "Did he---did he hurt you after I was banished?"

Nothing he could have said could have shocked her more. She opened her mouth to lie, to tell him his suspicions were unfounded madness. But no words came forth. She stared back at him, her face drained of all color. She could not speak of this to him. She had never been able to give voice to what had been done to her. She began to tremble, her treacherous eyes filling. He covered her smaller hands with his, gently, as though he feared his touch would fright her.

"Nay, do not speak," he said softly. "I have my answer. I saw the changes in you when we met again after the Battle of the Hornburg. I knew something was horribly amiss. But, Sweet Lady, sister! The whole world was burning down and---"

"And my wounds were nothing compared to that," she finished. "That was my thought as well."

"I turned my memories of that time over in my head a thousand times after you vanished. I examined and rehashed your every movement and word. It came to me, the why of it, a year ago, when I rescued a dozen women taken captive by brigands in a raid. The look in their eyes was the same. I am sorry, sister! I should have been there to save you!"

"He---" He throat began to close. She cleared it and tried to speak. "You could have done nothing, Eomer. There was dark magic involved, the same sort he used on Theoden. He---he---" She clenched her teeth shut, fighting angrily against the tearing sobs rose up in her chest. After a moment, she managed to steady her breath once more. "After the War," she told him quietly, "while I lingered in the Houses of Healing, I came to believe I would never be whole again unless I forsook the rule and protection of everyone and everything I had ever known. I cannot explain it in words that make sense. I only knew that if I returned home with you or wed the Lord Faramir, I would never feel safe or strong again. But that is no excuse for abandoning you utterly. I could have sent letters. I could have let you know I was alive and eased your mind. I am sorry! I am so sorry!"

He leaned forward and kissed her forehead. "I love you, Eowyn," was all he said by way of forgiveness. She supposed, in the end, that was all that needed to be said. "How is it with you, now?" He asked tentatively.

"The Hunters' poison still dirties my blood," she said, and immediately regretted it when she saw his face. She wondered how much Aragorn had told him. "Legolas, Gimli and I will not be free of this evil until their Queen is dead." She met his eyes, her gaze growing cold and steely. "I am going to kill her."

"Aye," he said with an odd little chuckle. Whatever he had seen in her face must have unnerved him. "You seem to have made a life's work slaying monsters." He paused and eyed her. "I meant to ask if you are well otherwise. Did you find your healing?"

"I did," she replied softly. "Though I was not wholly healed until I took Legolas as my lover."

His brow furrowed at this blunt statement. His hands clenched reflexively, perhaps imagining themselves wrapped around an Elvish neck. "It was not the Hunter's blood then?" He asked too quietly.

"No," she said. "The madness came after. Do not be angered, brother, with him or with me. He loves me and I love him." Eomer growled something nonverbal and displeased, and she took his hand. "Among his people, to become lovers is to be wed. There is no dishonorable middle ground. He will wed me in the mortal fashion and love me all my days if I say yes to his suit. But I cannot think of the future right now, not with this filthy malady still fouling my blood and body."

As he listened to her words, Eomer seemed to relax marginally. Finally he snorted and laughed. "There was a great stir when I married the daughter of Prince Imrahil three years ago. The sons of Numenor seemed to think a wild Northman, even a King, was too lowborn to marry into the line of Dol Amroth. The noblewomen of Minas Tirith, in particular, will be seeking your head when they learn you and Legolas are betrothed." He spoke as though the question of her consent to marriage was a forgone conclusion. "His father will be aggrieved as well."

"Aggrieved or angered?" Eowyn asked.

"It is often difficult to tell one from the other with Thranduil," Eomer grunted. "I met him once, when Aragorn convened a Council of Kings two years ago. He is very like Erkenbrand, if you take my meaning. He is a good man---or Elf, rather. He is also a right bastard. He has little use for mortals."

Eowyn shook her head, feeling a faint pressure in her chest, the ghost of that sense of being compressed between two great slabs of stone. "That is not something to worry over now," she said firmly. Inwardly, she turned her mind from the volatile subjects of marriage and enraged elvenkings. They were, in effect, under siege according to what little Legolas had gleaned during their painful illness of withdrawal. "Has Aragorn taken command of the City," she asked abruptly. "What has the Rhunballani Watch done during all the furor of the last two weeks?"

A rap on the bedchamber door silenced Eomer's reply.

"My Lord King!" O Sweet Lady, was that Gambold's voice?

"Come!" Eomer said.

Gambold son of Gamling strode into the room, his face tense of worried. His eyes fell on her and his face broke into full wide grin. He took her hand reverently and kissed it.

"My Lady," was all he said.

He had roughhoused with Eomer since they were tiny boys together, and shown no concern whatsoever when he broke Theodred's royal nose in sword practice. But he has always treated her as though she fell just shy of Elbereth and Varda in his personal pantheon. The simple joy this good strong man of few words put into that short greeting made Eowyn's eyes itch to cry.

"My Lord Gambold," she said, taking his huge scarred hand in hers, "It is good to see you again."

"What has happened?" Eomer asked quietly. No one would have interrupted their reunion for something unimportant.

"Elessar sends word that your sister is desperately needed in Queen's Council. The two factions have been shouting at each other for an hour now and may soon come to blows. A wise man would lay money on the shield maidens of the Watch, but that would be, in effect, a military coup against the ministers."

Of course. The Watch must have squared off against Obari and her ministers, vying for control of the kingdom.

"Let us go!" Eowyn said. She had begun moving before she even finished speaking.

Getting through the Royal Villa to the Council Hall was easier said than done. The corridors just beyond the royal wing were so crowded with people they could not pass. The whole of the kingdom was gathered in the Villa and the Fountain Square outside, Gambold told her quietly as he led them along a winding route through the servants’ hidden passageways to the foyer just outside the Hall. The press of bodies was just as great here, but they began to part a few seconds after Eowyn heard someone say her name. A choral symphony of gasps followed. Fingers pointed and every eye turned. The faces of these simple people, who stood waiting while the deliberations of the great decided their fates and the fates of their children were awestruck and a little frightened. Eowyn supposed it was not every day they saw a woman return from the dead. They parted like a wheat field pressed aside by a twister’s tale. Eowyn realized belatedly that she was now leading the way. It felt strange that her brother, her elder by four years and a King, should defer to her, even in this.

The outer rim and doorways of the Council Hall were packed to overflowing, but whatever mystique she had gained by emerging from the Nest alive held sway here as well. The throng divided, making a path for her. Eowyn could hear the shouting even above the rising murmur generated by her presence. She strode into the Queen’s Council Chamber and stopped, taking in the changes, a terrible lump rising in her throat.

All of Indassa’s pretty cushions had been replaced by Westron-style hard-backed chairs set in a ring. Eowyn set her mouth in a hard line to keep it from trembling as she realized she was instinctively searching for her little Queen, her charge, her sister. Indassa was not here and never would she return.

The acidic tones of Obari’s harsh voice, robbed of all its studied culture by rage, broke through Eowyn’s sad reverie. "Who has called this traitor, this bringer of doom, to my Council?!"

Eowyn took a few steps forward, trying to get her bearings, to discern who stood where. She advanced slowly into the center of the ring of chairs where the Councilwomen and Watch sat or stood, ranged against one another in two distinct half circles, like two opposing armies readied for battle. Before she could say ought, Shaeri spoke from where she stood, just behind the Suni’s chair.

"You must pardon our Captain, Mother," Shaeri said coolly. "She was detained from these proceedings because she was otherwise occupied with burning out the Nest of the Hunters and tearing down the Crags."

The entire assembly began to titter. But it was a nervous laughter, tempered by each individual’s fear of Obari’s long and vindictive memory. And, Eowyn realized sadly, fear of Eowyn herself and what she had done.

"Aye!" Obari said loudly, staring venom at her firstborn. "It was the least she could do after failing her charge as Queen’s Guard in the worst way imaginable!"

Eowyn kept her face blank and stony, but inside she quailed as the older woman’s words cut her to the bone. She had failed Indassa. She had failed her.

She ruthlessly pushed aside her grief and guilt, continuing to survey the Council Chamber silently. Aragorn, flanked by Legolas and Gimli, stood to one side of the Circle, hands clasped before him, watching the volley of threats and accusations as though he were a voiceless spectator. Eowyn forced her gaze past Legolas, barely touching on him. At the center of the Watch’s side of the Council Ring, sat Suni. Shaeri was on her left hand, Ikako and Fallah on her right. Behind Suni’s chair were gathered the commanders of every Watch House in Rhunballa, fanned out like an honor guard behind the---the throne.

Suni was sitting upon the throne of Rhunballa.

And once more, Eowyn thought, "Of course." The Council would have tried to seize power in the void left by Indassa’s death. The Watch must have countered by thrusting Suni upon the throne as the last living member of the royal house, albeit an illegitimate line. And now, Rhunballa stood poised on the edge of disaster, unable to prepare a defense or make any decision at all because it now had two contending governments, neither of which recognized the other’s authority. And knowing Suni’s cool pragmatism as she did, Eowyn knew this impasse would be put to rest one way or another today.

Eowyn hardened her face, and turned back to Obari, eyeing her expressionlessly. "Unless I am much mistaken, this is not your council."

Obari rose and stalked across the space that separated them, into the no man's land that lay dead center of the ring of council chairs. Eowyn moved forward slowly, back straight, head high, projecting what she fervently hoped was an aura of effortless authority. It stood in harsh contrast to the older woman's pose of hunched tension and barely contained rage. Whatever the circumstances, Obari always managed to look like nothing so much as the tyrannical mistress of her dead husband’s household, raging at her children and servants. Eowyn stared into the face of the Wineseller’s Wife and saw with shock that Obari seemed to have aged twenty years in less than three weeks. Her face was harrowed with fear and rage and something else, something terrible Eowyn could not define.

"You have no place here any longer, Eowyn of Rohan," Obari proclaimed in a voice loud enough to fill the Hall. "Our beloved Queen is dead through your own negligence! Yonder---" She stabbed a finger in Aragorn’s general direction. "---stands he who cast you off as firstwife for another. Go with him and serve as handmaid to his Queen, if he will allow it. Or follow you new lover to his Elvish haunts and bear his non-human, pale-skinned brats---"

Something whipped out of the corner of Eowyn’s eye and Obari’s tirade, her spiteful public revenge for Eowyn unkind words about her daughters’ virtue, was cut off with a loud crack. Shaeri stood beside Eowyn, holding the stinging hand she had just used to slap her mother.

The entire Hall held its breath as Obari paled with shock. No one else could have done it. If Eowyn or any of the other women of the Watch had silenced Obari so, it would have meant a brawl, had the Council’s supporters been so foolish as to rush the Watch. And then they would be trapped in a military regime that Suni ruled through force of arms alone. But because it was mother and daughter who had come to blows, no one felt inclined---or indeed, brave enough---to interfere.

"Be silent, Mother!" Shaeri whispered fiercely. "We have listened to you rail for over an hour to no good purpose. The Captain has the floor now. You may rebut her words, but you will stay your vicious defamation of her honor or I will drag you bodily from this Hall myself!"

"You little viper---!"

"Be silent but a moment, Obari," Eowyn said softly. She was not aware of anything in her voice or manner that had seemed threatening. But as Obari gazed into her face, the Wineseller’s Wife seemed to see something that frightened her more than a host of Hunters. Or perhaps, Eowyn thought with a chill, Obari saw just that---the flat, merciless stare of a Hunter shadowed behind Eowyn’s eyes. The older woman’s bright, spiteful presence flickered with a cold swirl of fear. Obari back away and resumed her seat, slowly, as though retreating from a dangerous animal. Beside Eowyn, Shaeri was gazing at her with a kind of still watchfulness. Whatever Obari had seen in Eowyn’s face, Shaeri had seen it too. And it had scared her.

"Obari is correct," Eowyn told the assembly at large. "Indassa is slain. I am no longer Queen’s Guard. And my rank of Captain of the Watch is no more."

"You are hereby reinstated," Suni said firmly.

Eowyn met the eyes of the erstwhile commander of Bent Bow Watch House and her heart smiled at the light of joyful welcome she saw in Suni’s normally inexpressive face. Suni looked distinctly uncomfortable in the rich silks Shaeri and Ikako must have forced her to don at sword point.

"And I accept with all my heart, my Queen!" Eowyn was startled at the ringing cheer that rose in the wake of her words.

"This is well and good," Sharadi said, rising from her chair on the Council’s side of the circle. She gave Suni a cold, polite bow. "Though Eowyn is not my friend, I at least, recognize the need for a unified fighting force for the duration of this emergency." There was a begrudging murmur of agreement from all the Council members except Obari, who sat taught as a mummy, eyeing Eowyn with a pinched mixture of fear and hatred. "Let us not," Sharadi went on coolly, "fight over the tea cosy while the house burns down around us." She eyed Eowyn with the flat practicality of a fishmonger’s wife gutting a trout. "We have many questions. Let us hear your tale, Eowyn of Rohan. Elessar has refused to take the floor, and the Elf has told us the news is better told from your lips."

"They ambushed us in the presshouse cellar," Eowyn said evenly. "Their leader had already slain Indassa and wound Master Gimli by the time Legolas and I arrived. They took us to the Nest. I will not speak of what passed there for I can barely think on the memory without---" She stopped speaking a moment. You could have heard a feather drop in the great Hall. "We escaped after finding a cache of Mistress Fallah’s fire bottles on the---the bodies of the Watch who were taken at South Pass." She gaze around at the stricken faces of the Watch, many of whom had known and loved those taken. "They all died very quickly and none of them were changed. We escaped, Legolas and I, thinking at the time that Gimli son of Gloin has leapt to his death. We used the last of the fire bottles to burn out the Nest as we left." She closed her eyes at the little cheer that followed her words. "Do not rejoice! We set their Queen ablaze and left her there to burn. As we fled, she pulled the mountain down upon us." And it suddenly occurred to Eowyn why Simiasha had done this. There has been cold purpose in the Huntress’ penultimate fit of rage. "I think, now, that she did this to smother the flames that were consuming her. She is not dead. And worse, she has called all of her children home, from Near Harad and the borderlands of Gondor. They are coming. They will attack. It is only a matter of time. We must prepare to fight them!"

"They are coming because of you!" Obari said stridently. "Do you think yourself a heroine, girl? Your escape has doomed us all!"

Sharadi gave Obari a measuring look that said, at this point, she was nearly ready to back Shaeri’s threat to expel Obari physically from the Hall. "The morning after you were taken, Captain," Sharadi said, "Mistress Obari found a---a note from the Queen of the Hunters. It was placed upon Indassa’s body as she lay in state, and addressed to the Council. It said our ‘treachery and defiance’ at South Pass must be repaid in blood. The Hunters’ Queen assured us that with the murder of Indassa and your capture the debt was paid in full. She let us know that there would be a renewed peace between her folk and ours." Sharadi shot Obari a venomous glance of contempt. "There were those on the Council to whom this seemed good tidings."

"But for most Rhunballani," Suni continued coldly, "the butchering of our beloved Queen was an evil that we were not willing to bear. In this state of renewed peace, the Watch began to rebuild Fallah’s arsenal and let the Council think what it wished. That one---" Suni pointed with icy precision, straight at Aragorn. "---came to the City a week ago, alone and disguised as a messenger and a physician. He put our Fallah to rights and delivered to Lord Hurin the news that five thousand Men of Gondor now traveled east from the Western Gap. He declined to mention that he had led these Men hither, and did not reveal his true identity until two days past when he bore you and Legolas back to Rhunballa City, still ailing from the wounds you took in the Nest." She said this with delicate tact, as though treading on thin, unstable ground. Eowyn suddenly realized that Suni knew, everyone knew, what had befallen her. That she had been wrenched back from the brink of the Change. Did they know or suspect that she was still unclean? If so, even Obari feared to say it aloud. "Now," Suni went on, "Elessar, the glorious hero of the Pelennor Fields, sits encamped upon our doorstep. He offers his aid."

"But before we accept or refuse his suit," Sharadi snapped, "we must decide who shall treat with him. The Council, or this self-proclaimed pretender."

Eowyn was silent a moment. "My Ladies," she said, "The Huntress will not wait for us to resolve our differences. We cannot afford such an impasse. Someone must bend."

Sharadi smiled unpleasantly. Eowyn could almost see the gears in the older woman’s mind turning and weighing her options. "We have offered a compromise that was summarily rejected."

"To take my eldest son as King," Suni said tightly. "Under the joint custody of myself and the Council. I would have one vote in twelve in how my little Aram is raised and how this land is ruled." She shook her head adamantly. "No! They would have us back to the first days of Indassa’s rule, when the Council bickered over how best to further their own financial interests and let the kingdom fall to rot!"

"There will be no kingdom if we do not decide on a course of action soon," Sharadi said harshly.

"There is another alternative!" Obari strode forward, raising her voice like a mummer mounting the stage. "An alternative to battle and bloodshed. One that has always served Rhunballa well in the past."

"And what, pray, would that be?" Sharadi asked coolly.

"We can give the Huntress what she wishes," Obari said.

Dead silence.

"She will crave revenge upon those who wounded her!" Obari cried. "If we give her Eowyn of Rohan, the Elf and the Dwarf, she will be appeased. And if we give her the great prize she has sought all along, the King of the West, she may very well reward us!"

"Madam," Sharadi said derisively, "I seriously doubt that Elessar will allow himself to be trussed up like a game foul and handed over to the Hunters. And the Watch will gut you if you raise a hand to their Captain." Her lips curled into a wry smile. "If she does not slay you herself for threatening violence upon her King and her Elf."

"We need only eject them from the City!" Obari said. She turned in a slow, wide circle, speaking to the crown at large. "All shall be as it was! The Hunters shall guard our mountains against invaders and we shall live free of fear once more!"

There was a quiet murmur from the crowd. Distantly, Eowyn was aware of a deep, quiet disappointment that bordered on heartbreak that any of the women in the crowd would even consider such a thing. But as Sharadi and Suni both rose from their chairs shouting, allied for the moment against the mere thought of another era of enslavement to the Hunters, Eowyn stood silent, making no sense of their words. All the world was quiet and cold as she closed her eyes and saw the empty chink in the presshouse crossbeam where she had placed the shard that should have guarded Fallah’s workshop and her work. It had been blasted from her mind be all the terrible events that had followed that discovery, but now it seemed to obscure all else.

"Obari," Eowyn’s too-calm voice cut through Sharadi’s deeper tones and silenced them. "How did you know that the Huntress’ true prey was Aragorn? Was that demand in the letter the Hunters left with Indassa’s body?"

Sharadi frowned impatiently. "There was no such demand in the letter. They---"

Sharadi was quick and Suni no less so. Eowyn watched in the corner of her eye as their momentary confusion bled away into shock. An instant later, the shock was replace by rage.

"You stupid cow!" Sharadi hissed.

Obari stared around at the three women who now stood in a rough circle about her. The crowd and the lesser Council members shifted nervously, straining to hear the lowered voices of the quartet of women in the center of the Audience Hall. Obari's face was pulled back in a skull-like mask of anger, fear and----and guilt. Guilt. Finally, Eowyn saw it and understood all too well whence it came.

"You thought to sell us to the Hunters," Eowyn said gently. "Legolas, Gimli, Aragorn and myself. Did Morsul come to you, Obari, and offer peace if you removed the Shard from the presshouse?"

No one in the Hall made a sound for a moment.

"Mother!" Insis' voice, crying from where she stood with the ranks of the Watch. The girl sounded terribly young suddenly. "You could not do such a thing! Tell her you did not do it!"

"Yes, Obari," Suni said coldly. "Tell her."

"I---I---" Obari seemed to be crumbling in upon herself. Then she fixed her eyes on Eowyn and seemed to rally a bit, finding strength in the focus the woman she saw as the source of all her woes. She glared at Eowyn, her face full of hateful, ratty fear. "The fiasco at South Pass was your fault! You deserved to die, you barbarian beast! And the King of Gondor? Pah! He is an enemy. The other two were strangers and not even human! And I thought---I thought, why not renew faith with our protectors. And in the same stroke, be rid of the woman who has turned Rhunballa upon its head and the King who slew my husband and my three beautiful sons! They---they were not supposed to harm Indassa! I---I never meant for that to happen!"

Eowyn stepped forward with slow, cold deliberation. She saw Indassa's pretty eyes wide open in death. She saw Legolas screaming as Simiasha thrust her mind into his. She saw Gimli's good, strong face smeared with blood and tears an instant before he jumped from the Crags. She saw herself, hanging limply in Morsul's arms as he drank her life away. Eowyn's hand never strayed to her sword as she stepped forward. Obari deserved the same fate as Haradoun. Eowyn would kill her with her bare hands.

Shaeri's face suddenly appeared before her, blocking her way to Obari.

"Eowyn, please," her friend said softly.

Eowyn stared at her, her own face blank and cold. "Do you know what she gave us over to?" She whispered. "Shall I describe what they did to us in the Nest?"

But Shaeri only bowed her head, her hands clasped before her as though in prayer. "Eowyn," she said softly. "Please do not kill my mother."

Eowyn stopped, staring into her friend's stricken face.

Obari cried out suddenly and Eowyn turned to see Sharadi and the Wineseller's Wife struggling for the mastery of a blood-tipped dagger.

"That is for our Indassa, you stupid, treasonous bitch!" Sharadi shrieked.

It took Suni, Shaeri and Eowyn together to pull the two older women apart. The audience chamber was in an uproar.

"Keep your seats!" Suni rapped out in a strident voice that brooked no disobedience.

"Momma! Momma!" Insis had broken ranks with the Watch and was running to where Shaeri was gently easing their mother to the floor.

Eowyn barely heard Suni's harsh command, bidding Ikako take Sharadi to the gaol. She was too busy watching the two sisters who had made an art form of disobedience to this the spiteful, mean-spirited woman who had born them. And now, they knelt weeping over their dying mother. Sharadi had sunk her blade deep into Obari's belly. Eowyn knew from hard experience that such a wound to the liver was almost always fatal.

"Momma!" Shaeri whispered, kissing her mother's ash-gray face. "Please do not die."

"It is just," Obari said in a dry rattling voice, barely audible. "I betrayed my queen, though I did not intend it."

Eowyn watched mutely as Fallah and Aragorn converged upon the stricken woman at the same time and knelt to tend her. Insis' muffled little sobs brought a lump to Eowyn's throat. She swallowed it along with the tears that were pricking at her eyes. Eru knew she would have cheerfully slain Obari herself five minutes ago. And now...

And now, it was impossible to rejoice in the wretched woman's death without mocking her children's grief. "Always remember," Theoden had told her long ago, "Be he vile as a Morgul wraith, there will be someone somewhere who will weep for the Man you slay."

"We must remove her from this circus tent, O King." Fallah spoke to Aragorn as a journeyman healer would address his beloved schoolmaster, Eowyn thought. She would like to learn at some point what had evoked this change in her friend, who had, until a month ago, spat on the ground whenever Elessar's name was mentioned. The grim look the Apothecary's Daughter had exchanged with Aragorn told Eowyn all she needed to know about Obari's chances. "For her daughters' sake," Fallah continued, "they should all have privacy."

"I will carry her," Aragorn agreed.

"Let Somal bear her," Suni said quietly. It was not a request. "You are needed here a little longer."

Aragorn regarded her steadily, then bowed slightly in silent, courteous assent.

"Die and be accursed, you faithless betrayer!" Someone cried from the upper gallery.

"Be silent!" Eowyn shouted. "The next one of you who treads upon the grief of the Wineseller's Daughters shall deal with me!" The Hall became went still quite suddenly.

They watched in silence as Somal came forward and bore Obari away from the gawking gazes of the assembly, to die in peace with her daughter's attending her. Eowyn's head began to throb with strain. Shaeri and Insis deserved to see their mother die painlessly, even if Obari did not deserve such a thing herself.

There was a long space of quiet, filled only with the shuffling of so many bodies pressed into the Hall. No one ventured to speak again. Suni kept her face impassive, regarding what was left of the Council with watch full tense eyes. Bereft of their two most powerful leaders, they were not an imposing lot. Matab the Weaver's Wife looked as though she might burst into tears.

"Eowyn," Suni said softly. "Perhaps I am a fool, but I am not quite sure what I need to do next."

"The Council has turned upon itself," Eowyn told her. "They are publicly dishonored and discredited. Take the throne, my Queen."

Suni's handsome bronze face remained still but her eyes were windows to the fear and strain within. "I did not wish to have this thrust upon me."

"The Wise would say that such a sentiment makes for a good ruler, Highness," Aragorn murmured.

Suni regarded him coldly and seemed to gather herself. She raised her head and surveyed the crowd. "When, my people," she said in a ringing voice, "have we ever lived free of fear? When have we lived free at all? We put our trust in vipers, in carrion beasts---in monsters! Such creatures cannot be befriended or tamed! They are death incarnate. They are utterly evil and will devour us the instant it strikes their fancy." She turned a cold eye upon Aragorn. She was a tall, coppery-skinned spear of a woman, of an age with Eowyn, and every inch the natural warrior. And Eowyn saw now, every inch the woman who should be queen. "All things being equal," Suni said, "I would joyfully sink my sword into the heart of this son of Numenor, for he slew my father, my brothers, and my husband." Eowyn marveled at how Aragorn stood apparently unmoved by the tangible pall of hatred directed at him. "But if the Huntress takes him, I believe that we will have served our purpose in her eyes. She will gorge herself upon our blood and upon our children's blood. And if we are lucky we will die. Moreover," she turned, addressing Aragorn directly. "You could have taken this City at your whim any time in the last week. Yet you did not. You have tended those you came hither to rescue and kept your silence in our Councils. We shall never call you friend, but we would be hard put to find a better ally under siege." She turned back to the crowd. "Let Elessar pay a portion of the blood debt he owes every woman in Rhunballa by shedding his blood to defend this kingdom!"

The shouts of 'Aye!' were deafening.

"So then," Suni spoke to Aragorn with chilly courtesy. "We accept your offer, son of Arathorn. But you must set yourself under the command of my Watch."

Aragorn bowed low. "I do so without reservation, O Queen."

Eowyn kept her face blank, hiding the fact that her mouth had just run dry of spit. She could not command Aragorn! Every instinct she possessed would balk at taking charge in any situation where he stood present. But to refuse the command would be to cast doubt upon Suni's first decision as Queen. And in truth, the Rhunballani would rather die than let Aragorn lead them into battle. Eowyn inhaled slowly, meeting Aragorn's eyes. And as she did, it seemed he bequeathed her a measure of his own personal magic. It steadied her mind, her hands, her voice. It told her in a tone she could not imagine defying that she had the strength, the will, the leadership to do this.

Her eyes smiled thanks into his though her lips did not move, and she felt an odd tug at her heart, the ghost of her old hero-worship. Though she did not desire him as husband or lover, she would always love him, perhaps in the same way Legolas and Gimli loved him.

A rumble from the crowd, rolling from the back to the fore like the voice of an approaching earthquake, shook her out of her reverie. The sound of so many questioning voices and so many jostling bodies nearly drowned out Suni's words.

"What has happened?" She called. "Pass the word forward!"

"A company of Men, my Queen!" Someone called a few seconds later. A pause. "Warriors of Harad. The soldiers of Gondor have just born them to the square. There are less than three score and some are badly wounded."

Eowyn started to speak, started to move forward purposefully. But she checked herself sharply, turning her gaze to the new queen of Rhunballa. Suni was not Indassa. Like Aragorn, Suni would lead her soldiers, both figuratively and literally. Eowyn spared one heartbeat to swallow a fresh surge of grief that Indassa had not lived long enough to grow so bold. Then she fell into step just behind Suni's right shoulder and followed the queen to the Square. The crowd parted for Suni as she moved through them, bowing low.

The morning sunlight cut down in a harsh, glaring angle, but Eowyn did not shield her eyes. With so many eyes on her it would not do to seem overly sensitive to sunlight. The throng in the Square fell back from the ring that had formed around the wounded Men. Sarabi the Midwife and her new husband, Brock the Miller of Laketown had begun tending them already, sorting the wounded from the dying, stemming the flow of blood for those whose hurts were not beyond repair. In the East, it was considered a cruelty to prolong the life of the mortally wounded in any way.

"My Lord!" Lord Hurin bowed politely to Suni, his eyes were on Aragorn. "Their leader is gravely wounded, but he demands to speak with Emperor Haradoun. He says he bears urgent news of the blood drinkers' movements east of the mountain passes."

"Tarosh!" Moussah cried, leaping forward, out of the crowd. He beat Aragorn to the injured man’s side.

"Haradoun!" The old man was drenched in a gory smear of his own blood. His right leg looked like it had been nearly ripped from his body. But somehow, he was still awake. He gripped the arms of the younger Haradrim tightly. "Where is the Emperor, boy?"

"He---" Moussah paused, his face set and hard as though he were bricking up tears behind a stony façade. "He is slain, Uncle."

The older man Moussah had called Tarosh paled, but he did not seem surprised. "When he sent no word for so long after leaving Gondor we knew something was amiss. You father called a meeting of chieftains to decide what should be done. As we supped and argued amongst ourselves on at the Khizg Oasis, the Dhak-Dir fell upon us. None survived save myself."

Moussah’s face might have been made of granite for all the reaction he showed. He nodded carefully and spoke in the flat, emotionless voice. "My father is dead?"

"Aye," Tarosh whispered. "And every chieftain of the Thirteen Greater Tribes! And a great part of their folk who were encamped about the oasis. By sunrise, there was no elder left alive save myself. So, I followed the plan your father and I had proposed." He fumbled for a black swathed bundle that lay on the ground beside him. "I have brought that which I meant to give to Haradoun. I give it to you, young Emperor, now that your cousin and father are dead." Tarosh sighed dryly and swooned at last. He had been hanging onto consciousness by sheer force of will alone.

And still, Moussah’s face did not alter one whit, though all his color slowly drained away. Emperor, Tarosh had called him.

"By your leave, Hajila-dai," Aragorn said formally. He had been kneeling beside the prone man, examining him as he told his tale.

Moussah’s head snapped up at the Haradrim words that fell fluidly from Aragorn’s lips. Hajila-dai…Honored Emperor.

"If your uncle’s honor will bear it," Aragorn said, "I think his life may be saved."

Moussah frowned, caught between his grief at Tarosh’s tale and a cold pragmatism that was no less horrified that an enemy king now knew that Harad was in disarray, its most powerful chieftains slain. "Can his leg be saved?"

Aragorn’s face was as blank as that of the young man before him. "No."

"He is a warrior of the Shil Dassi," Moussah said, as though that explained everything.

"The Wolf Tribe," Aragorn murmured.

"You will not dishonor a brave man’s death by letting him live on as a worthless cripple!" Moussah said flatly. He drew the long, curved dagger at his side, and began to pray. Eowyn winced, recognizing the Black Speech.

The sound of the tongue was unmistakable, like long, witchy fingernails drawn down a graphite slate.

"It seems to me," Aragorn said, softly interrupting the harsh tones of Moussah’s chant, "that a seasoned warrior would not be wasted as war councilor to a Chief of Chieftains. And he may still fight from the saddle with one leg. But it is not for me to say."

"No, it is not," Moussah snapped. He gazed down at his uncle’s unconscious face, his eyes burning with furious indecision. "Old custom demands I slay him as his closest kinsman. But---" He took a deep slow breath and was silent for a long tense moment. Too much change, too quickly, Eowyn thought. She knew what Moussah was feeling all too well. "It occurs to me," Moussah said finally, "that the Hajila-dai may make his own custom. Tarosh is wise and cunning and steeped in warcraft. I shall have need of such a man." He sheathed his dagger with a nearly invisible sigh. "Save him if you can, Elessar. But you shall have a rich reward, for I will not live in your debt!"

"Save your gold," Aragorn told him grimly. "If we are to live through the next few nights, we shall all owe one another our lives a dozen times over."

Moussah nodded, his mouth turning upward in a mirthless smile. "You speak the truth."

The next hour passed in a blur as they bundled the wounded men into the Royal Villa on Suni’s command. The audience chamber made for the best sort of open-aired surgery ward. Fallah arrived at some point with the solemn news that she had sequestered Obari in one of the Villa’s guestrooms and given her something to make her last hours more comfortable.

Eowyn took the hands of the Apothecary’s Daughter and clasped them tightly. "I thought the Hunter’s had killed you, my friend!" She said.

"They proved my father right in that," Fallah said blandly. "He was ever telling the world that his daughter had an uncommonly hard head."

Eowyn stood in the archway of the Queen’s Hall, and watched as her friend left to see to the skylighter armory Suni had set up on the outskirts of the City.

"Eowyn!" Aragorn was striding toward her, his hands and tunic stained red, his face grim. "Eomer has gone down to the fallow soy fields west of the City where the bulk of my men and his Riders are encamped. I do not need to warn you that it will take a large lever to prize your brother and your countrymen from their horses in this battle."

Eowyn nearly groaned aloud. She had not even thought of that.

"How would you have us marshal our men?" Aragorn said in a gentler voice, watching her face closely. Again she felt the wheeling vertigo of unreality at the thought of Aragorn asking her for orders. "Eowyn." Her eyes snapped open at the note of command in his voice. "You know this land’s defenses better than anyone. You built them."

"I did," she agreed. She smiled warm thanks and told him the general gist of her fortifications and battle plan. He nodded in silent approval and they set to work.

Every pair of hands in Rhunballa was put to work, laboring with feverish fear, their eyes turning constantly to the inexorable Westerly progression of the Sun. Every building in the City that would house the young and the old had already been whitewashed in a mix of water and bakery powder. There was huge assembly party, hundreds strong, of folk fletching arrows and dipping each finished product in oil.

There was one tense moment in the Westron camp when Eomer nearly balked at her command that his Riders leave their horses corralled below the City, just as Aragorn had warned her he would. She walked with him a little ways from the main encampment toward the lean-to hay sheds his Riders had erected at the base of the earthen stairways that led upward to the City. She led Eomer apart from their folk on the pretense of asking his opinion on a weighty tactical matter. In truth, she did not want to argue with him in front of his men.

When she made her own mind known, her brother favored her with a mulish expression she remembered well from their childhood.

"Even if her were not fighting in close quarters within a city of narrow streets and alleyways," she told him, "a man on horseback is an easy target for these creatures. Our people will be as defenseless against an aerial assault from the Hunters as their were against the Nazgul at Pelennor." Her words caught in her throat as she remembered the horror of the Witchking bearing down on Theoden from above. "Brother, I do not wish to see you or any of our warriors slain like Theoden, horse and Rider together."

His face softened at these words. It was perhaps the only thing she could have said that would have moved him when cold logic had no effect. Eomer was a good man. He was clever and strong and he had never wanted for bravery. But, as ever, he thought with his gut and his heart. These he followed in the heat of the moment and the only thing that save him from disaster what that his heart was so great and pure. But the cold fact remained that he was at his best as Gondor’s cavalry marshal and sword arm, leaving Aragorn to make the hard decisions.

"You had best not command your husband to be as you do your hapless brother," he said huffily in the end, with a brief glance over her shoulder. "Or he may rethink his suit."

Eowyn swallowed an angry and probably very loud response to that parting jibe, watching her brother stride away. She turned on his heel and nearly ran into Legolas. She regarded him a second or two, feeling a tug of guilt that she had not spared him a glance, or in truth, more than a stray thought, all morning.

"Legolas," she sighed his name like a far traveler speaks the name of his home.

A smile bright as the Sun above them bloomed on his beautiful face. "He is wrong," Legolas murmured. "You may command me in any way you see fit, my lady."

She felt her cheeks burn as a rush of desire swept through her body at nothing more than the subtle innuendo in his innocent words. She stared at him foolishly, trying to remember what she had been about to say.

"I can barely think straight when you smile as me so," she said finally.

"It is strange and wonderful, is it not?" He was standing a good four feet from her, his hands clasped lightly behind his back. Nothing in his face or bearing suggested anything other than casual conversation. But his gray eyes reflected the same heat raging inside her. "Before, we were blind and deaf to all such things. Now, it is as though some damned flood has been loosed inside us both. And I am swept away on its swift current."

She nodded mutely, not trusting herself to speak.

"We should use every hour of daylight to our advantage," he went on. "There is too much work to be done. But at every turn I think of you. And looking at you now, I would like nothing more than to lie beside you in a bed of summer wildflowers and see their blossoms tangled in your hair as we---" He stopped speaking and drew a shaky, steadying breath. She was glad he could do so for she seemed to have temporarily lost the ability to breathe. "I questioned Aragorn about this, for I was worried such an overwhelming craving might be an aspect of the Change. He only laughed and told me this is normal when love is so new."

"It---" Eowyn swallowed hard. "It is good to know that we are not losing our senses." She did not want to think of Aragorn and Legolas discussing the nature of desire or what else Legolas might have asked of or confided to his married friend. If she did, she would never again be capable of looking Aragorn in the face without cringing in embarrassment.

"I have kept my distance all this morn," Legolas told her, "so that the two of us could go about our work undistracted. And also, for your sake and Eomer’s, I did not wish to set tongues wagging more than they already are."

"We are lucky Eomer did not kill Obari himself for her words this morning," Eowyn said. "It only angers me, the rumors and half-truths that have been bandied about. But it hurts Eomer terribly because he loves me so."

"Aye," he said quietly. "But the great will ever be subject to the breath of tale-bearers. Rumor and legend a-bourning follow Estel like the caribou of the North follow the summer winds to greener fields. Since taking the throne, all of Aragorn’s closest friends have had to suffer false tales and accusations."

She frowned curiously. "Such as?"

"They say that Gimli coaxed Aragorn to pressure your brother to declare the Glittering Caves beneath Helm’s Deep and Helm’s Deep itself Dwarvish property," Legolas told her, "thus robbing your people of their ancient fortress. The truth is that your brother bequeathed Gimli’s folk all the caverns below the Hornburg in return for a portion of the metals and gems their mines would yield. Gimli’s folk are building a Dwarvish city beneath the surface of your homeland. Some Men whisper that Aragorn sent Mithrandir from his side because he feared his great power, when in truth, he departed into the West whence he came. And they say of me---" He pause, laughing silently.

"What?"

"When Lord Elrond brought Arwen to take Aragorn’s hand at his coronation," Leoglas said, his eyes sparkling with mirth, "I led the procession of Fair Folk. There are many in Minas Tirith who say that when I stepped aside for Estel’s bride to approach, I did so in more ways than one."

Eowyn’s eyes grew wide. "They say you were the Queen’s lover?"

"Oh, no!" He said merrily. "They say I was Aragorn’s lover." And he laughed aloud at the look on her face.

"Oh my," was all she could think to say to that.

Legolas shook his head. "That story is a mark of the waning lore of Gondor, I think. Which remembers that Elves have neither law nor customer forbidding such love, but forgets---" His lips twitched, "---that not all Elves are thus inclined."

She could not help it. She began to laugh like a little girl. All of his warm, infectious humor seemed to have spilled into her, loosening, if only for a moment, the tight knots of stress in her back and chest."

"That is how you should always laugh," he said sobering a bit. "Bright and free of care, with the Sun on your face."

"That would be nice," she said a little wistfully.

"That day will come, meleth-nin," he told her softly. "I swear it."

His eyes caught hers and it was all she could do not to touch him, not to fly to his arms.

"Give me a task, Eowyn," he said with sudden, quiet intensity. "Give me a task and let me be about it this instant, or in another moment, I will carry you into the hay shed behind us and neither of us will do a thing to prepare for battle this eve!"

She started guiltily. Now was not the time to dissolve into a giggling, love besotted girl. "There is something I would ask you and Gimli to do," she said steadying her voice. "There are many Shards which are twice the size of the smallest slivers of Elwing’s Orb, Legolas, but all were proof against the Hunters. We will need two, perhaps three times as many Shards tonight."

"Aye," he nodded. "We must still cloister all the young and old as before, but we will also need Shards to protect the soldiers who will be fighting in the open."

"I need you and Gimli to find every Shard and break them again," she said. "We must distribute the new slivers to every company of men and women who will fight tonight."

"I will do it as quickly as I may!" He smiled briefly, all the wealth of his love for her in his eyes, and turned on his heel, sprinting back up the earthen stair to the City.

She watched him go, her feet frozen to the ground. He reached the top of the hewn pathway and turned to wave quickly. Her heart contracted in her breast and a cold shiver of dread crept up her spine, dimming the golden Sun above her.

Though they had met at Helm’s Deep more than four years ago, it suddenly occurred to her that, all told, they had spent less than a month in each other’s presence. And yet, she felt as though she had known him her entire life, as though he were as much a part of her, heart, soul and flesh, as Eomer.

If he died tonight, it would destroy her, as surely as a sword thrust through her heart.

A terrible cramp of fear swept over her as she began to scale the same path Legolas had taken, veering left at on of the winding forks that led behind the laundries. This was not the fear she had felt for Theoden and Eomer. This was not the anxiety she knew every time she had led another warrior into battle. It was a desperate, selfish terror that had no thought for anything or anyone except Legolas. She topped the clay stairway and quickened her pace though the busy streets of the city she had called home for twenty-eight months now. She took a mental inventory of the soldiers and weapons at their disposal for the hundredth time. In truth, the bulk of the labor of readiness was already done. She had laid these battle plans in preparation for a full out attack from the Hunters more than a year ago. The only real adjustments were positive in the extreme, to allow for a greater number of defenders. And with the added wild card of the Shards, which she had never anticipated, they actually might stand a fighting chance.

She moved past the trade houses of the Dyers and the Laundries, where women were still coating the largest buildings with a milky mixture of water and baker’s powder. Before nightfall, the entire city would be encased in white goo, but it would go a long way toward saving Rhunballa from burning to the ground once the skylighters began to fly. As she crossed Physician’s Street she saw a steady stream of men and women running from the new weapon’s shop carrying armfuls of fireworks. Fallah would have handpicked them nearly a month ago. As she reached the Fountain Square, she watched in fascination as Fallah’s fireworks corp spread out in orderly sync, dispersing themselves among the companies of the Watch and Rhunballa’s foreign defenders who were already taking up positions in their captain’s quarter of the City. It only remained to protect them with the Shards Legolas and Gimli would bring. Eowyn caught sight of Suni and went to see to the organization of the northern wing of Rhunballa City’s defenders.

By early evening, still a good five hours from sunset, Eowyn found herself standing in the center of a fortified city, bristling with armed soldiers. As the Sun dipped ever lower in the sky, the constant low din of talk grew quieter. The City’s defenders were fearful, but still, Eowyn thought grimly, most of them did not truly know what they faced.

"Lass!" Gimli hurried toward her, his face pained and angry above the thick red sweep of his beard. "We have a situation brewing in the Queen’s Library!"

Eowyn followed him back to the Villa. Her face hurt from the strain of frowning with concentration and tension. Gimli led her to the Library that had been old King Udam’s private study. In the four years of Indassa’s reign, the young queen had filled the large room with every book and tome she could beg or buy from every merchant who crossed her borders. Suni sat in the black cushioned chair that Indassa had claimed was her father’s favorite place in Middle Earth. The new Queen’s face was a curious mixture of worry and supreme annoyance. To one side of Suni’s chair stood Moussah of Harad, his back rigid, his nose tilted upward as he favored Eomer with impassive contempt. In his hands, he held a black-clothed bundle close to his breast as though it were a precious child.

On the Queen’s right hand, Eomer stood between Aragorn and Legolas, his large shoulders fairly quivering with restrained rage.

"Can no man here give me a simple answer now that the lady in question is present?" Moussah said, glancing briefly in her direction.

"I have told you plainly," Aragorn said with a deadly, quiet courtesy that sent a chill down Eowyn’s spine. Aragorn was as close as she had ever seen him to losing his temper and it was a frightening thing to see. "The Lady Eowyn is not now, nor has she ever been, my wife or my beloved."

Moussah nodded shortly. He turned back to Eomer and Legolas. "It falls to one of you then. If the Elf claims her not as firstwife, the King of Rohan is still her lord. Will you speak, Elf, now that the woman stands before us?"

Legolas regarded him coolly. "Do you ask if we are wed according to the customs of my people or of hers?

Moussah growled softly. He looked as though he were fighting to keep from grinding his teeth in anger. "In Harad, Men know that Elves are fair-seeming deceivers and tricksters of the unwary. You have replied to my simple question five times in the last quarter hour and each time you have failed to give me anything resembling an answer. Are you incapable of speaking plainly?! Let me be blunt, so there may be no misunderstanding between us. Westron marriage oaths and effete, mindless ceremonies cannot seal man and woman in wedlock! Answer me! Did you take her maidenhead or not?!"

"You stinking sand rat!" Eomer would have leapt forward, sword in hand, had Aragorn not grabbed his right arm in a grip that made the younger man’s face blanch.

Eowyn had already leapt before her brother, opening her mouth to berate him loudly. An instant later, she heard a dull thud behind her. Moussah lay on his back, glaring up coldly at the long knife Legolas held pressed against his throat.

"Can you tell me," Legolas asked him gently, "why I should not cut your throat for having so disrespected my lady?"

"Then she belongs to you---" Moussah finished that sentence with a strangled gasp as Legolas pressed the blade a little tighter against his jugular.

"She belongs to herself," Legolas said softly.

"Legolas," Eowyn said quietly. "Please do not kill him. He is a brave warrior and we shall need his sword tonight."

Very slowly, Legolas removed the knife from the young Man’s throat. Eowyn watched him, slightly shocked by this mercurial burst of cold rage on her behalf, however justified. It occurred to her once again that, though she loved him without reservation, in many ways, she barely knew him.

There was a cold angry silence as Moussah climbed to his feet.

"What is it you with to ask of me that you must know to whom I belong?" Eowyn asked.

Moussah frowned uncomfortably, meeting her eyes for a half second before glancing away. And Eowyn suddenly understood the odd change in his behavior toward her. In Harad, widows with no male kinsmen to claim them were free to govern their own affairs so that their children might not starve. Upon his arrival in Rhunballa, Moussah had assumed that Eowyn, like nearly every other woman in this land, was a widow of the War. But in light of recent revelations and the fact that she was an unwed woman of royal birth, his ingrained good manners has reasserted themselves. In the East, a man did not directly address a lady without the leave of her husband or father. He did not look her directly in the eye unless he was her kinsman. Eomer and Legolas had both flown into a rage at Moussah’s indelicate question, but without their leave, it would have been an unforgivable insult to Eowyn and to them had he addressed her directly.

Eowyn sighed. "I do not belong to my brother, or to Legolas or Aragorn," she said to the air, turning away from the young Emperor so as not to embarrass him further. "But I am a woman of the West and Aragorn is my King. And my lord."

Moussah nodded almost imperceptibly, still not looking at her. No one but Aragorn seemed to recognize this for the gesture of respect that it was. Moussah turned back to Aragorn, his black eyes full of pride. Slowly, he unwrapped the treasure he held swaddled in black silk. It was two chunks of obsidian stone, one small, one large. It was flat black, yet….

It seemed to glow dully with some sort of inverse radiance. It was as though the two stones were----were lamps that shone darkness instead of light. Beside her, Eowyn heard Legolas hiss softly and step back, almost as though the stones were painful for him to look upon.

"What is that?" Aragorn asked tightly.

"It is called the Daegond," Moussah said reverently. "My forefather, Herumor, brought it from Numenor to the Lands of the Sun. His mother was a concubine, a Haradrim chief’s daughter, brought to Andor as tribute to the last king of that land."

"That would have made him the bastard son of Ar-Pharazon," Aragorn said coldly.

"Aye, cousin," Moussah replied with a sly smile. "From the firstborn line of Elros, unbroken. If Numenor still stood, my claim to the throne would supercede your own."

"If Numenor still stood," Aragorn ground out, "the Valar would plunge it again into the abyss rather than see one such as yourself sit upon the throne."

"We shall never know," Moussah shrugged. "The Daegond was a gift to Herumor from the Dark God himself. It is a shard of Grond that Sauron rescued from the wreck of Angband."

"And why," Aragorn asked in soft anger, "would you seek to set such an evil thing in this Lady’s hands?"

Eowyn started, turning from Aragorn to Moussah in confusion. She felt at a distinct disadvantage here, having arrived late.

"It cloaks the radiance of Elvish magic and masks the power of even the Westron gods’ relics," Moussah replied. "It’s metal is not of this earth. Legend says Morgoth wrought his mighty hammer from a dead star that fell from the heavens. It is diamond hard in its inert state, but heat will smith it into any shape we wish. During the Battle of Gorgoroth, we used it against the magic of Gil-Galad and his minions. I had thought that we might fashion the ore into small encasements. We might hide several of the Elvish Shards until the Dhak-Dir are upon us and then spring some manner of trap."

Gimli’s eyes grew wide. "If this cursed metal can hide the Shards’ power until we have lured them in close, we might be able to kill them in far greater numbers!"

"Aye," Moussah agreed with a grim smile. "Take it, cousin." He held the larger of the two fragments out to Aragorn, smiling coldly at the King’s unfriendly glance, for Moussah knew well the that his ‘cousin’ was displeased to be reminded of the common ancestry he shared with the Black Numenorians. "We have no smiths among my warriors."

Aragorn eyed the stone gingerly. He was coldly pragmatic enough to recognize the Daegond’s tactical value, but he was still loath to even touch it. "I will have none of it," he said finally. Legolas breathed a heavy sigh of relief.

"Then give it to me!" Suni said, rising from her chair. "My folk will make use of it to save themselves, even if yours will not."

"It is yours, Highness," Aragorn said gravely. "Though I would council you strongly against using it. Such things absorb the malice of their masters over time and may turn upon you like a serpent."

"A serpent," Suni said, "cannot turn upon me if I do not deem it tame or friendly. We will use it with caution."

Moussah gave Suni the larger chunk of the stone. Still holding the smaller piece of the shadowy metal in one hand, he glanced once more at Aragorn. "A thousand years ago, this piece broke apart from the greater stone. It was prophesied by our seers that it must find its way into the hands of a Golden Lioness who would save Harad and its people from the Queen of Blood and Darkness."

Eowyn felt a chill crawl up her spine though she did not react outwardly.

"I believe," Moussah said intently, "that the hour of that foretelling is come, for my kinsmen have told me that all of Near Harad is besieged by the Dhak- Dir. If this little kingdom falls, so fall both the East and the West. We will never be friends, Elessar. Nor shall we have peace between our kingdoms if we survive this fight. You are a mad people, who have rejected the immortality Sauron would have granted to Men had his greatest designs been realized." He gestured to Eowyn briefly, glaring at both Aragorn and Eomer. "It makes my blood run cold to see that you would so blithely give this strong and beautiful woman in marriage to a---a creature such as that one." He stabbed a finger in Legolas' general direction, his lips twisting in revulsion as he cut his eyes back to Aragorn. "But then you have taken one of them to wife, so---"

"Stop!" Aragorn said sharply. His voice was still calm, still controlled, but his face had gone white with rage. "I have heard enough of your Haradrim heresy. I will hear no more. And if you refer to my wife or this my brother in love as a 'creature' once more, you will see me angry."

Moussah seemed about to say something unwise, but reason prevailed. He clenched his jaw and nodded. "Aye. Aye, there is no present profit in this old debate. You name us slaves and wardogs of a monster and we say that you are traitors to Mankind. But the Dhak-Dir do not care if we are Westron of sons of Harad. Let us, for the moment, agree to disagree. The lion, Elessar, is the ancient emblem of the warrior in the East. I ask your leave, as the Lady Eowyn's sovereign lord, to give her this part of the Daegond. I believe she is destined to wield it in our defense."

Aragorn was silent a long moment. "If she will take it from your hand, she has my leave to use it as she sees fit."

Moussah bowed coldly. "I would speak with the Lady as well. Again, by your leave."

"As you wish," Aragorn said curtly.

Moussah offered Eowyn the stone, holding it before him like a bride price, still modestly refusing to meet her eyes. "Take this, Lady. And may you truly be our savior, for we are poor in hope as it stands, even with the Elvish Shards and your clever fire weapons."

She felt rather than saw Legolas tense beside her as she took the black bundle wordlessly.

Moussah hesitated, as though he were considering his next words with great care. "I have a question to ask of you, my Lady."

"Ask," Eowyn said, holding the black stone away from her body. It was unwholesomely warm to the touch, like a living thing. It’s very proximity was beginning to make her want to shudder.

"I cannot imagine how terrible it was for you in the Nest," Moussah said softly. "If you do not wish to answer, I understand. But I must ask. While you were their prisoner, did you see ought of Haradoun? Did---did they change him into one of them as they tried to change you?"

The raw grief in his voice shocked her more than she would have thought possible. "Be he vile as a Morgul wraith," Theoden’s ghostly voice whispered once more in her mind, "there will be someone somewhere who will weep for the Man you slay." The image of Obari’s deathly pale face, of Shaeri and Insis weeping over their mother’s stricken body, flitted briefly through her mind.

"They did not change him," Eowyn told him, her voice strangely gentle to her own ears. "Nor did they feed upon him. He died as a mortal Man. It was very quick."

Moussah stood motionless, his handsome face unmoved, his eyes dry. But still Eowyn could have wept for the silent grief that poured out of him. "Did you slay him, my Lady?" He asked very quietly.

Eowyn was suddenly conscious of Legolas’ presence at her right shoulder and Aragorn’s just to her left. Eomer had strode almost casually around to the young Haradrim’s side, flanking him. If Moussah made any sudden moves, Harad would have to look elsewhere for its next Emperor.

"With my own hands," Eowyn replied in an equally soft voice. There were no words of apology or condolence she could give him that would not be lies.

Moussah did not speak for a long moment. "I thank you, my Lady, for saving my kinsman from the Dhak-Dir. And for gifting him with a warrior’s death."

It would have meant eternal shame to Haradoun’s name had he died a captive or thrall of Simiasha. By giving him death at the hands of an enemy, she had spared his honor among his people. In Moussah’s eyes, she had done Haradoun a kindness.

Eowyn accepted his thanks stoically, thinking to herself that Haradoun had no honor to salvage. The only thing that she had spared were the feelings of the young man before her who had loved his cousin as a brother. She eyed this new Emperor of Harad closely as he bowed low to her. Moussah had been raised to be a faithful servant of Mordor. He believed implicitly that Sauron and Morgoth before him had waged war against the tyranny of the Valar and the Eldar’s usurpation of Man’s immorality and rightful place in the affections of Eru. He would make a cunning and deadly antagonist for Aragorn if he survived their present peril. But he had not asked her why she had killed his kinsman. He knew, and more importantly, understood the why of it. And that, at least to Eowyn’s mind, was an immeasurable step upwards from Haradoun.

"My countrymen stand ready among the Watch of Rhunballa," he told her. A small grin tugged at his lips. "I gave them the choice of standing shoulder to shoulder with the warriors of Elessar or fighting along side women."

Eomer snorted angrily, recognizing the insult for what it was. Aragorn only smiled grimly. "Do you fear to fight among us?" Eomer asked sardonically.

"The widows of this land are my kin, though far removed," Moussah said. "They have cast off their mourning sackcloth and taken up arms to defend their children. We fight in far nobler company than you." He eyed Aragorn coldly. "Twilight is almost upon us. What will you do if our defenses are overrun?"

Aragorn was silent.

"I am a Man," Moussah continued, "and shall be a lord of Men should we win the day. But you have been touched by your arrogant gods in some fashion, Elessar. For though you are wrong-headed and sworn brother to the Eldar, you are a King among kings. If she takes you for her minion, she will sweep across Middle Earth like an unstoppable plague."

"I will not be taken alive," Aragorn said flatly. "If the moment comes when I am too injured to deny the Queen the prize she seeks, these three who stand beside me, my brothers in arms, have sworn to end my life rather than let her take me."

Moussah nodded slowly. "So do I also swear."

"And I," Eowyn said. But the ill-omened oath tasted like funeral ashes in her mouth.

She stood in numb stillness as, one by one, the others took their leave of each other and of her. Later, she found she could not recall the exact words she exchanged with Argorn, Gimli, Suni, or even Eomer. She stood locked in place after they all departed, staring down at the battle plans strewn across old Udam’s desk that were nothing more than an orderly division of the City among its respective defenders. She lay the black wrapped stone Moussah had bequeathed her on the dark wood of the table, for its touch was making her skin crawl. She should go and take her place in the Square at Suni’s side. She should see how Fallah’s distribution of the arsenal had progressed. But as she felt Legolas’ hands gently descend upon her taught shoulders, her heart shuddered in her breast once more.

"With the addition of Aragorn’s men and Eomer’s Riders," she told him, "there are more than seventeen thousand lives at stake. And the only thing in my mind at this moment is the terror that I might see you slain tonight."

"Aye," he agreed shakily. He stepped closer behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist, his breath in her hair. "I have never truly understood, until now, the old custom among my people that forbids warriors who are lovers to fight in the same company. I am torn between wishing to guard your back and---"

"Aragorn is more important that me," she said firmly.

"In my heart, you and he are equal," he murmured. He turned her in his arms to face him and she nearly wept for how her whole being leapt with happiness, even now, at nothing more than the sight of his face. Was she mad? Influenced by the dark blood still coursing through her veins? Or was love in its essential makeup a form of madness? She had no frame of reference for these feelings. She could not compare what she felt now to the crippled, needy yearnings she had felt for Aragorn. Aragorn had seemed to her like a beacon in a sea of hopeless night, a life raft to a drowning soul foundering in dark waters. Legolas was---he was her flesh and blood, the other half of her heart.

"I am so afraid," she said. Her chest felt as though a vise had been clamped around it, restraining its natural rise and fall as she breathed.

"What are your fears?" He asked softly, kissing her face.

"I am afraid that we will be destroyed and Middle Earth overrun by Simiasha and her brood!" Eowyn said. "I am afraid that everyone in the valley will die tonight. I am afraid of losing my brother when I have only just found him again. I am afraid of losing you!" She wiped her face angrily with the back of her hand. She was not sure when she had begun crying. "You healed me, or at least helped me to heal myself. But Legolas, I have never faced battle without some part of my heart frozen! I am thankful beyond words to be whole again, but---but I am afraid this unfettered ability to feel will overwhelm me when I must act!"

He brushed her damps cheeks dry of tears. "In this long litany of all your cares, not one word of fear do you spare for yourself. The bravest always save their fears for those they love. You will not falter. The fear for those around you will only strengthen you and sustain your resolve to defeat our enemy." He spoke with such utter surety, such calm strength. She stared into his eyes and saw the phantom memories of battles and skirmishes beyond count, of millennia standing toe to toe against the foul things that had sheltered beneath the dark wings of Dol Goldur and the Shadow that had polluted the great forest of his homeland. As Prince of a beleaguered realm he must have learned to judge a warrior’s metal to a hair’s breadth. And she knew, beyond questioning, that he would never lie to her.

"I pray that it is so," she said.

He kissed her once more, like a soft whisper of hope breathed into her lungs. "I must stand by Aragorn and you must fight at the Queen’s side. I love you, Eowyn of Rohan! And I will see you again come the dawn."

He turned and was gone. For another long moment she did not move, standing in silent prayer. She raised her head, then, and set her right hand upon the pommel of her sword. Almost as an afterthought, she scooped up the black bundle on the table and strode out into the afternoon Sun to set the last of her preparations in motion.

An hour before dusk, Ikako presented Suni with half a dozen small clam shell cases she had wrought from the Daegond and the Queen of Rhunballa parsed them out among the Watch. Each one held a Shard, and was to be opened only if the Hunters gathered in mass.

Ikako frowned at she watched Suni send one of her own Bent Bow archers running with the last of the black ‘jewel cases’. "It is not wholesome or natural metal," she told Eowyn. "Nothing I have even worked has smithed into such precise, small specifications in less than three hours time. It is as though the ore flowed into shape of its own accord."

Eowyn shivered. "I have spoken to her, but she will not be turned aside." She had little room to criticize, remembering the heart-sized lump of the same metal she had shoved into her pack simply because she did not know what else to do with it. She could not say why she had not put the stone aside, but despite her own misgivings and the crawling sense of darkness that seem to seep from the stone, she had did not want to discount any potential weapon.

"I have a surprise, my Captain," Ikako said without any preamble. "Come."

Eowyn followed her from the square, through the mob of men and women rushing through last minute tasks. She caught sight of Gambold politely ushering another family into the Royal Villa. The little Nihon-jin smith said nothing as they walked and Eowyn’s curiosity became almost unbearable before they reached Ikako’s smithy on Craft Street.

"I found your Westron broad sword broken on the floor of the presshouse cellar after the Hunters took you," Ikako said in her curt way. "I also found the Elf’s long knifes---beautiful workmanship those. He was very happy to have them back when I gave returned them to him this afternoon. When they brought you back to Rhunballa alive, I began forging your sword anew. I stole some materials from your rooms in Queen’s Guard for the remaking of this weapon."

She unwrapped the shimmering katana from a silk sheath on her worktable. "It is not finished. I must put strength into the blade now or it will be too brittle to survive more than one battle, but it is nearly done."

The metal gleamed like silver in moonlight. The sheen was more than the glint of mortal steel, or even mithril. Eowyn took the sword, testing its balance. It was perfect and beautiful, a deadly masterpiece.

"What have you done, my friend?" Eowyn asked, quietly awestruck.

"How---?"

Ikako smiled, a mere upward twist of her lips, and told Eowyn what she had done, how she had wrought this shining thing. "It is a weapon fit to slay a queen among monsters, it is not?"

Eowyn began to smile slowly, nodding her head. "Aye, it is. You may well have wrought our salvation in this, Ikako."

"I would have given it to Suni had you not survived the healing," Ikako murmured. "But archers are only good with short blades. You are the better swordswoman."

"There is one addition that is needed," Eowyn whispered. "Simiasha is fearfully strong, but I have found that most evil things are craven when they perceive a true threat."

"You have but to ask, Captain-sama." Ikako’s exotic, angular eyes were bright with pride, though her face did not change at all as Eowyn told her what was needed. "It will take all night," the smith said after a moment’s calculation. She grinned wickedly.

"I will send you a Shard for protection," Eowyn told her, "so that you may work unhindered tonight."

Ikako nodded and set to her work. Eowyn left her to her great task. As she left the smithy, emerging into the ever-lengthening shadows of evening, she stopped suddenly. The world around her was growing brighter, more vivid. The ache in her muscles and bones, the feeling that her entire body was one giant bruise inside and out after the ordeal of purging her blood, was gone. She felt strong and full of boundless energy, more awake than she had felt all day. As she walked the streets with weightless ease, heading back to the square, the men and women hurrying past were firebrand sparks of light and life, each with its own delightful shade of color and feeling. The Sun would set soon, in less than an hour. And the part of Eowyn that was still a Hunter was waking.

The Sun slipped below the Western peaks with little ceremony. From the vantagepoint on the flat roof of the Royal Villa’s guest wing, Eowyn watched the City breathe a collective sigh. Somehow, everyone had suspected a terrible onslaught the instant the Sun set. It did not come.

Eowyn frowned in bleak apprehension. In another hour, the City’s defenders would begin to speculate whether Simiasha meant to give them another week of siege or attack head on? The people of the valley had remained indoors, shielded by the Shards, in a limbo of watchful fear after Eowyn had been taken. Rhunballa had been spared until tonight by Simiasha’s wounds, and later by her need to recall her forces and her command to decimate the council of Harad’s most powerful chieftains. But without a word of warning, without a shred of proof, Eowyn simply knew it would be tonight. She knew in her blood.

Beside Eowyn, Suni stood tall and impassive, fingering her quiver full of oil-soaked arrows. Fallah sat nearby, lighting chip wood fires in the small tin flower pots they would use to fuel their fire bottles, arrows and skylighters.

"Your countrymen were laying bets against anyone surviving the night," Suni told her blandly, her cool, calm gaze sweeping across the tiled rooftops of the City, many of which held similar groups of archers and members of what Fallah had dubbed the ‘rocket corp’. All throughout the City, atop and surrounding every large structure that housed Rhunballa’s people, the warriors of Rhunballa, Rohan, Gondor and Harad stood ready.

Eowyn grinned. "What were the odds?"

"Twelve to one against," Suni replied.

"The Riders believe it is good luck to bet with the odds, even when they are against you," Eowyn told her. "Either way, you win."

Suni chuckled softly. "I saw their speed and strength at South Pass, my Captain," she said, her brief smile fading. "You have seen more of them than any living soul should have to see. Can we win?"

"If we last through this night," Eowyn told her steadily, "we can defeat them. Of that, I am sure."

Suni eyed her levelly. "I will trust your word in this, Eowyn, and keep my hope. You have never lied to me."

Eowyn grimaced. "I have lied well and often by omission."

"By neglecting to tell us your life’s story?" Shaeri was hobbling toward them on her splint, her father’s antique scimitar unsheathed, held lightly in one hand. "That you are granddaughter, niece and sister to kings? That you are dear friend to Dwarf Lords and Elf Princes and Elessar himself? Or that you slew the Lord of the Nine in single combat?" Shaeri snorted. "We would have collapsed with laughter and bid you take you wild fancies to another country." The Wineseller’s Daughter smiled sadly at the questioning, hesitant gazes of the other three women. "My mother is passed. She told Insis and I that we were terrible, disrespectful and shameful daughters. And that she loved us more than the Earth and Sky." Shaeri laughed, her eyes bright, free of tears. "She was nothing if not consistent, my mother. I told her Moussah would be Emperor of Harad and he has said he will take me as firstwife if I will have him. Momma died smiling."

"I am sorry for your grief," Eowyn said.

"And I," said Suni and Fallah as one.

Shaeri never had a chance to reply. A cry came from the chandler’s workshop, carried from housetop to housetop. "To the West! They come from the West!"

Eowyn stared hard and gasped. Her night vision made the blue-black of late twilight clear as day. A black cloud had detached itself from Western peaks and risen into the darkening sky. It grew in size as it gathered speed. It was not a cloud, she saw, cursing and blessing the clarity of sight Morsul’s blood had given her. It was a teeming murder of black-winged Hunters, thousands strong. The humming sound of their wings and the shrill cackle of their cruel laughter came to the City, and on all sides Eowyn heard the answering wails of Rhunballa’s human defenders, quailing in fear.

"Torches!" Eowyn cried. "Do not---I say again, do not---light the skylighters until the enemy is directly overhead and in range!"

Distantly, from atop the roof of the Carpenter’s Guildhouse south of the Square, she heard Aragorn’s strong voice commanding his archers and rocket corp to hold, to bide their time. The City, it had been agreed, was too segmented, to sprawling, to be defensible under a single commander. And thus, they had partitioned Rhunballa City into quarters. Aragorn, having the greatest number of soldiers under his banner, had taken the entire southern half of the city, commanding the southeast himself, setting the southwest quarter in Lord Hurin’s hands. Eomer and his Riders defended the northeast. The Watch and Moussah’s warriors had taken the northwest wherein lay the Royal Villa and the Square. Into the ranks of each defending army, Eowyn had sent Fallah’s rocket corp and Shards to protect them.

All across the wide expanse of the City, torches burst to life, like a thousand fireflies taking wing. They waited in frozen silence as the din of the enemy’s cawing cries grew to deafening proportions. Closer and closer they came, bearing down upon the living like a ravening storm of carrion birds.

"One thing I must know before we die," Shaeri said.

"What is that?" Eowyn asked tensely.

"Your Elf Prince----was he wondrous sweet?"

"Beyond words," Eowyn whispered. Oh gods, she had not told him she loved him before they parted. And now, she might never have another chance.

Shaeri cocked at eye at her and grinned, hefting her scimitar in both hands.

"Lucky wench! I knew he would be so!"

"Mother of Day!" Fallah said in a choked voice beside her. "Here they come!"

The Hunters reached the City and swept over it, hovering overhead, blotting out the stars with their numbers. And then they descended. Eowyn had one brief moment to think to herself that this was wrong, too easy. The attack was either mad arrogance of suicidal stupidity.

"Fire!" She screamed, drawing the spare sword she had taken from Queen’s Guard Watch House. Its weight was unfamiliar, but it would serve.

The skylighters tore into the air, turning night into day wherever they burst.

It had not been madness, she saw now, gazing upward at the falling charred shreds of the lowest wave of Hunters. Simiasha had sacrificed half her army with cold deliberation. The upper half of the undead host had hovered higher, just out of range, using their fellows as fodder to spend Fallah’s rockets.

"Light your arrows!" Suni cried to her bevy of archers, bending her own bow. The Shard clenched in the hand of Damri of Bent Bow Watch House roared to life, bathing the rooftop in silver light.

The Hunters fell upon them.

One night thing, and then another, swept downward and burst into flame as it careened inside the halo of light. Eowyn had a quick, half-second image of Shaeri tossing a lit fire bottle into the air. A third Hunter bore down on her from above and he struck the bottle with one foot, kicking it back down to the rooftop. The night exploded around her. Eowyn was hurled twenty feet through the air by the blast. She rolled to her feet coughing, sword in hand. A yellow-eyed, leering face veered toward her in the smoke and she cut it in half almost absently.

"Suni!" She cried.

"Throw your fire bottle higher next time, you hussy!" Suni’s voice was saying somewhere off to her left.

"Did it singe the royal backside, O Queen?" Shaeri snickered.

"Eowyn!" Fallah’s voice called.

"I am here!" Eowyn said.

A flaming arrow whizzed just by her head, followed by a guttural snarl of pain. Eowyn wheeled and began to hew the monsters that clambered over their fallen fellow. She ran through the fire bursts and screams, staying just out of the Shard’s light, homing to the scent of death that hung about Simiasha’s children. She tore a path of carnage through the dozen Hunters who had been so foolish as to light upon the Villa’s roof. Their lightning speed seemed to have slowed to something more manageable, something less daunting. But as she clove a clawed beast that loomed up at Shaeri’s shoulder, Eowyn realized that she was wrong. They were as swift and deadly as ever. It was Eowyn who had changed. The burning, poison draught of Morsul’s blood, roused from slumber by nightfall, was coursing through her veins again, lending inhuman speed and strength to her every move.

Eowyn smile grimly. She rolled beneath another clumsy swing of a Hunter and swung her sword. The beast’s head went flying, his body crumbling to ashes.

"Suni!" She heard Shaeri’s voice call out in fear.

Eowyn sprinted forward, out of the smoke shroud that surrounded them, and met the bent bow of Rhunballa’s queen, almost falling upon the arrow’s head in her haste. Suni met her eyes and Eowyn saw the fear in them as her friend slowly lowered her bow. Fear of the monsters around them, certainly.

But also fear of Eowyn.

"Your eyes," Suni said hesitantly, her hands still clenching the readied bow.

"I am still your Captain, Suni," Eowyn said grimly. "I am not yet one of them."

"Eowyn! Suni!" Fallah’s voice cried. "Come and see!"

"Stay within the light for your life’s sake!" Suni commanded the score of women still huddled in the shimmering light of the Shard.

Eowyn ducked back, seeing two stragglers, young girls from Deep Wells.

She pulled them forward, closer to the light, an instant before the silent thing behind them would have snatched them to their deaths.

"….have not yet lost a single woman," Shaeri was saying at Suni’s side.

Eowyn reached the edge of the roof where the others were standing in silent shock, looking down upon Rhunballa. At first glance, it seemed the entire city was ablaze. Every structure was radiating silver light as though filled to the brim with luminescent moss. The Shards within were blazing, deterring any Hunters that might feel inclined to venture indoors for toothless prey. There were fires everywhere, but it was impossible to tell whether it was the City or the Hunters burning throughout the panorama. Everywhere were the sound of voices screaming in pain, fear, rage and triumph. Everywhere were the brilliant concussion flares of fire bottles. The night sky was still raining writhing balls of fire as archers hit their marks from the shelter of their company’s Shards.

Directly across the Square, swords drawn and bows singing, were Moussah and his men atop Queen’s Guard Watch House. They were fighting in an outward-facing ring of warriors, a shining Shard in their center. And they were singing in their own tongue. Eowyn knew the song. The Watch had burst into a slightly altered version of it during the first skirmish of the Eastern Gap six months ago. As she listened, she heard the rest of the Watch take it up again, following Moussah’s clear-voiced lead.

"Tonight, my brothers, we fight and die,

  Under a black and star-strewn sky.

  Brave and strong, we slay the foe,

  No better end a Man can know!"

In the distance, south toward Craft Street, she could hear snippets of some ancient Numenorian air. And to the east of the Square, she caught a strain or two of a Rohirric battle song. She could picture her brother swinging his sword, Gambold at his side, laughing in the face of the winged horrors around them, bidding his Riders sing louder so as not to be outdone by the Haradrim or even the sons of Gondor.

"We are winning!" One of the younger girls exclaimed. "We are killing them!"

"For the moment," Eowyn said darkly. She was straining her eyes upward, peering with her unnatural sight to see what the cluster of dark forms still hovering directly above the Square were about. "They are more clever than this, trust me!"

"Then let us kill as many as we may while they are still spending their lives like fools!" Suni muttered.

Eowyn nodded, her gaze still ranging above them, a terrible sense of foreboding swelling in her chest.

They did not have to wait long for the other boot to fall, as Eomer would have said. As Eowyn swung through the flailing, blinded body of another Hunter who had come too close, a black shower of thick sludge spilled out of the air above them. She brushed the clumps off her shoulder, peering down at what covered her hand in slow horror. It was a thick pudding of black oil and wood shavings.

O Sweet Lady!

A chorus of shrieks sounded around her as every woman holding a torch or flaming arrow began to wail as the fire leapt to their oil-splattered clothing and hair. Another Hunter, swooping in just out of range of the Shard, dropped his burden directly upon Damri, the young woman who bore their Shard. The black mixture covered her from head to toe and the girl burst into flame like an oil-doused rag. Shrieking, her skin burning like candle wax, Damri stumbled off the roof of the Villa and was gone.

"Taora!" Suni shouted without missing a beat. "Open the black casement Ikako made."

The girl was already struggling to open the ‘jewel case’ Ikako had made for the spare Shards. It had been meant to be used as a spring trap, to open should a large number of Hunters rush them at once. But now they needed it simply to stay alive. Taora was prizing the clamshell shaped case with all her might. And it would not open. Just as Aragorn had warned, Eowyn thought, the Daegond had turned upon them. As Fallah ran to help her, a wicked-looking little mallet in one hand, a Hunter dove downward and bore Taora upward, shrieking.

There was no time for horror, for the Hunters were upon them. Back to back in a circular turtle shell formation, they fought now just to stay alive. Eowyn stalked in a close circle, darting here and there in a deadly blur of motion, determined she would not see another woman in this company die. She tore the beasts from her fellows and hewed them limb from limb. She would not let them win the Villa or the Square for they were the City’s heart.

There was no way to see now what was happening elsewhere. The night and sky were a world of flame and smoke and screams. The only thing she could directly protect at this point was the lives of the women in her company and people crammed into the guest wings of the Villa below them.

Dimly, she could hear Aragorn’s voice. "If Amrod falls, another take up the Shard!" Good advice. But it had not saved Damri or Taora.

"The roof!" Fallah’s voice shrieked off the Eowyn’s right. "Eowyn, they are tearing through the roof!"

She flew toward the sound of Fallah’s voice and skidded to a halt beside her friend. The Apothecary’s Daughter was on her knees, out of breath, kneeling in the center of a widening pool of light. In one small hand, she held a Shard. It was not until several hours later that Eowyn realized Fallah---brave, foolish, beloved Fallah---had climbed down the gutter pipe and retrieved their single Shard from Damri’s burnt body on the ground. Eowyn arrived beside her friend just in time to see two Hunters, tall bone-white Men, pouring a barrel of their oily sludge down into the gaping hole they had torn in the Villa’s roof, just above the main Guest Hall. Just above the shrieking children and old women that were packed inside. With a long-toothed smile, the larger of the two let fall the torch he was holding just over the hole.

"Go!" Cried Fallah. "We have the Shard again to protect us up here! Stop them! Stop the fire!"

It would have to be enough, Eowyn thought as she leapt forward and plunged down through the hole. The two Hunters had alighted. They had only to wait for the fire to spread and force the helpless ones inside to flee the Villa. And then they would feed.

Eowyn fell headfirst. She had taken no care as she leapt. She spun in the air like a cat and slammed to the floor in a burning hell of wailing cries. If she thought she had known horror before this moment she had been a fool.

The black shower had splattered over young and old and the fire that followed had shown no mercy. Those who were burning were being stripping of their clothes, the flames beaten out if they were not completely engulfed in fire. But the paint on the walls and ceiling had caught fire. There was no saving the Villa now. Eowyn glanced upward and saw Suni and Fallah’s faces peering down through the tear in the roof.

"The fire is cutting across the ceiling!" She cried. "Follow me down from outside. I will wrench the doors open from here, but we must be there to guard them as they flee!

"We will come as quickly as we may!" Suni shouted through the cloud of smoke between them and was gone.

Eowyn surveyed the screaming mob. They were already piled up against the barricaded doors that lead to the Fountain Square. Those in front were being crushed by those behind as everyone pressed forward in blind, unreasoning panic. Eowyn sought and found the old woman, Madgar the Headsman’s Wife, to whom she had given the Shard that was shielding the Villa’s interior from the Hunters. The thin, bird-eyed old woman stood unperturbed by the terror on every side, holding up her Shard as though the room was not quickly burning down around her.

"Mistress Madgar!" She cried. "I am going to open the doors! Call as many to you as you can when we are outside and command them not to flee away from the Shard’s light!"

The old woman nodded grimly. Eowyn forced her way forward until she could go no further. The doors----oh Elbereth, the doors opened inward and the crushing weight of all those trying to reach the exit was only growing worse. She stopped, closing her eyes for a brief second, shivering with horror at what she was about to do. She reached deep within, finding the whole of the terrible strength Morsul, her father in darkness, had bequeathed her.

Eowyn sprang, leaping through the air above the heads of those that strove and wailed against the unyielding doors. She struck the foot-thick, black oak doors, firsts first, and crashed through them. They shattered into kindling with the force of her impact. Eowyn rolled to her feet just in time to avoid the stampede of panicking women and children.

"Stay in the Square!" She shouted at the top of her lungs to those who were now stumbling past her into the open air. She could not tell if anyone heard her words, but it was obvious they saw the light of the Shard old Madgar held aloft in her hand. They streamed out of the smoke-filled Villa and huddled around the old woman in a growing throng. Eowyn stayed about the edge of the crowd, wild-eyed, tearing to one side and then the other whenever the sound of wings alerted her to the Hunters’ presence. Where were Suni and the others?!

A cry sounded from the far side of the crowd as one of the undead, brighter than his fellows, sheathed his wings and simply strode up to a small girl cringing on the outer edge of the crowd and swept her up in his arms. He fell with the snarl before he got ten feet into the air, a burning arrow protruding from her shoulder blades. The girl’s screaming mother snatched her from the burning body. Eowyn glanced up and saw the white flash of Moussah’s teeth from atop Queen’s Guard on the other side of the Square.

Another flight of arrows whipped above her head, finding their targets with vicious accuracy. Eowyn peered in the direction of that particular volley. At first she saw no one. She frowned, trying to remember who, if anyone, should be fighting atop New Bakery. Queen’s Guard was between the Square and the tall, box-shaped Bakery, obscuring much of her line of vision. A moment later, she could just make out the shadowy forms rising up here and there. First one, then another, leapt from the roof of New Bakery, landing lightly on the ground. But it was a thirty-foot drop---

"We are here!" Fallah cried, pelting toward her. Suni and her archers were hurrying after her, firing as they ran. Fallah tore around the other side of the crowd, finding the place farthest from old Madgar and her Shard so that her own Shard could give those on the outskirts better protection.

Another storm of arrows, burning like a score of tiny dragons, flew from Queen’s Guard. A cry and an angry Haradrim oath sounded as a man pitched from the top of Queen’s Guard, falling headfirst. Eowyn suddenly saw why. The Hunters were still hovering, just out of Shard and arrow shot range. And now they were pelting Moussah’s men with stones the size of a man’s head.

"Down the ropes!" The young Emperor shouted. "Stay close to Udin and the Shard. We are indefensible here!"

Above the Square, the Hunters were massing. The lure of so many screaming humans and the sure knowledge that there were too many people in the Square to be defended had drawn them like flies to honey.

Eowyn hurled herself at Fallah, knocking her friend aside before a bolder the size of a dray horse crashed down upon her. The Shard she bore went flying as Eowyn pushed her to safety and its light went out abruptly. Eowyn stood and rushed toward the giant stone that was now sitting on top of Fallah’s Shard, obscuring its light.

A booted heel crashed into her head from above, knocking her onto her back. She sprang to her feet again dizzily, spitting blood, and saw the Hunter who had kicked her standing before her, Taora’s Daegond jewel case dangling in one hand. She launched herself forward and up when he would have taken to the air again and caught him by the heel. She slammed him back to the cobbles with all her might and he crashed to the ground in a tangle of broken wings, swearing fluently in the Common Tongue. He rolled to his feet, barely avoiding the sweep of her sword. Shouts everywhere, all around her, and the cries of human and Hunter voices told her there would be no fire arrows spared to help her. The Watch and Moussah’s men were hard pressed to do anything but keep the enemy from carrying off themselves and everyone in the Square.

The Hunter, a tall Man of Gondor, grinned, bouncing the jewel case in one hand. "It this something important, little sister?"

She spat an ugly oath at him and blurred forward. The Hunter dodged aside, but only just. And as he did, a second dark form veered in from above, striking her in the head once more. Another black-winged shape touched down upon the ground beside him, then another, then a dozen more. They closed in a circle around her, grinning with cruel mockery, staying just out of reach of her sword arm. She turned in a slow circle, holding her sword before her unsteadily. The world was spinning drunkenly now. She became aware suddenly that she was growling low in her throat like a cornered cat.

"The Mistress has commanded we take you alive," the Gondorian Man said.

One of his fellows, a blunt-faced soldier in tattered Haradrim garb, chuckled harshly. "When all the others are dead, you will be slave to the Queen’s most favored sons. But we will taste you first---" His words ended in a gurgle as Eowyn’s sword clove his head in two neat halves.

"Come then, you pack of craven jackals!" She shouted. Her words came out in a harsh, inhuman snarl. "Come every man of you who thinks he can best me. I am daughter to Morsul, the Queen’s Consort, and I wield every ounce of strength he bequeathed me now that night is upon us! Come!!!"

Her countenance must have been truly terrible for they flinched to the man. She did not wait for them to recover. She flung herself to one side and slid her blade through the neck of the nearest of them. But an instant later, they rushed her as one, clutching at her sword arm, pressing on her with the weight of numbers, using their combined might in a valiant attempt to immobilize her. She felt herself being lifted off the ground and the sound of their leathery wings filled her ears. Cold hands snaked across her breasts and loins greedily, tearing at her clothing.

Much later, Eowyn would try to remember exactly what happened next, but the memories were blurred, red-rimmed images. Something inside her---whether it was the woman or the monster, she was not sure---uttered a bone-chilling howl of rage.

She seized one of the hands pawing at her and simply tore the Hunter’s arm from its shoulder socket. She spun and whirled as her startled captures fell heavily to the ground. Everywhere, she heard the sound of human voices crying out when they scrambled out of the way just before Eowyn and the score of monsters about her slammed down on the unyielding cobbles in the middle of the crowd.

Where was the bloody Shard she had given Moussah? Or the one old Madgar held? Were they all too beleaguered and spread out now to keep the entire body of people in the Square covered in the light of their Shards? Or were young Udin and Madgar crushed under falling stones Shards and all, as Fallah would have been?

Those brief questions flitted through her mind in a fraction of an instant. Then the beast inside her reared and howled her fury once more. She tore and slashed, ripping them to bloody pieces with her razored nails, laughing as she slew. The last one, the broken-winged Westron man who had slain Toara, who still carried her jewel case, stumbled away, trying to take flight.

Eowyn leapt upward, sheering his one good wing off his back. When he fell back to earth once more, she took his head in both hands and tore it from his shoulders. He dissolved into a pile of black ash, and she hunted through the silt of his remains desperately, searching for the Daegond case. With a growl of triumph, she found it.

"Open up, you treacherous bitch!" She hissed. She slammed the jewel case onto the stone street of the Square and it broke in two halves.

Salvation, pale silver and beautiful, bathed the entire Square, washing into every dark nook and cranny, finding the dead ones wherever they were. It was as though Shard’s light had been stored up inside the Daegond case, gaining power during the time it was constrained in its darkness, and then rushing outward like a dammed river when it was finally released. The Hunter’s high caws of agony sounded everywhere in the Square, on the ground and above, as the holy light burned them to dust.

Very slowly, after some unknown space of time, Eowyn became aware of voice, shouts, the flare of torchlight. She gradually began to emerge from the blood-smeared haze that swam before her eyes. She managed to focus on a strange object, shiny and metallic, that was less than four inches from her nose. She frowned at it in exhausted confusion. Her head hurt terribly.

It was a needle-sharp arrowhead. It was attached, she finally saw, to an arrow that sat drawn in an ash longbow. She was sitting in a circle of drawn bows, all of them trained upon her.

"One side, Elandor!" A deep musical voice said impatiently.

"My lord, she is a----"

"Now!" An Elf’s face suddenly replaced the arrowhead that had been aimed directly between her eyes. "Can you understand me, child?" He asked gently.

He voice was so beautiful she found herself smiling weakly. She nodded mutely, trying to find her words again. It was as though she was once more fighting her way out of the non-verbal fog the Change had induced.

"Alive….me alive…." She managed to say. "Not….not like them."

The Elf glanced about at the wreckage she had made of her enemies and grinned wryly. "Of that, I am sure." His smile slid away. "How many others, besides yourself, are infected?"

"Myself,’ she said with effort. "Gimli Gloin’s son. And Legolas of Mirkwood."

She watched the blood slowly drain from the Elf’s perfect features, though he did not seem surprised. "Where is he?"

Eowyn did not have to ask whether he meant Legolas or Gimli. "Southeast quarter. He is fighting….Aragorn’s side."

The Elf warrior’s face darkened, his mouth settling into a thin, hard line. "Of course. He would be."

She studied his face, thinking that he looked very unlike Legolas except for his golden hair. He was taller, well muscled, a swordsman rather than an archer. He appeared five to ten years Legolas’ elder to mortal eyes. His face was harder, his eyes less bright and open, shadowed with old griefs and not a little bitterness.

"You are Thranduil," she said with another wan smile. She felt fuzzy and light-headed and so weak she would have toppled over had he not been bracing her with one strong hand on her shoulder. "You have come to rescue your son. He will be happy to see you!" She spoke in a warbling voice, completely unlike her own. But as she spoke, his face softened. He hooked one arm around her waist with the ease of a veteran battlefield physician, easing her to her feet while still bracing her legs.

"One would hope," he said dryly. "Come, glorfinniel. The fighting is over for now. The sky is growing light. Guide me from this rabble of ungrateful wenches to my son."

"My friends---" Eowyn turned about, searching for Fallah, for Suni and Shaeri, in the crowd of familiar faces. She finally caught sight of Fallah and saw why Thranduil had been trying to gently guide her from the Square.

Fallah was uninjured. Behind her and a little to the right stood Suni and Shaeri. Moussah’s tall, black-clad form hovered just behind Shaeri protectively. Their faces were soot smeared and tired but it was the fear and pity in their faces that broke Eowyn’s heart. They had seen her fighting the Hunters at the end, watched her lose herself to the dark madness of the Change. It was one thing to know Eowyn was infected with the Hunter’s blood. It was quite another thing altogether to see her hands change to claws, her teeth to fangs. She wondered if, even now, her eyes were blue, or the golden slit-eyes of a Hunter. The stares of her friends could not have been more horrified and sorrowful if she had come to them fully changed, clambering for a taste of their blood.

"Fallah?" Eowyn said softly. She tried to take a step toward her friend. As she did, the Apothecary’s Daughter unconsciously flinched back. Eowyn made a small, weak noise of wordless hurt and would have fallen had Legolas’ father not caught her.

He swept them all with a withering gaze of cold contempt. "How faithless is the loyalty of Men to those who defend their lives!" He told the crowd. "As ever!"

Thranduil lifted Eowyn up in his arms without another word and bore her away, pushing his way rudely through the crowd, his warriors at his heels.
The sudden movement utterly disrupted Eowyn’s fragile equilibrium and she closed her eyes, her head spinning, her stomach twisting ominously.

She wondered if the King of Mirkwood would be terribly wroth if she vomited on his beautiful mithril mail shirt. After a moment or two, she adjusted to his long striding gait. She wiped her face irritably, brushing away tears she did not remember shedding. She was feeling stronger, more lucid but the moment. Overhead, the sky was growing steadily brighter, indigo lightening toward reddish near-dawn.

"You said the southeast quarter of this city?" He asked calmly.

"Aye," she said. "I can stand, my Lord."

"You can," he agreed darkly. "But you cannot run or fight those who might take it into their heads to put you down like a lame colt. I would not trust a soul in that crowd with your life until they have had time to master their fear of what they saw." He glanced down as she bit back a weak little sob, and again, his cold beautiful face softened. "Weep if you need to, glorfinniel. Elves do not equate tears with weakness. Even in shield maidens of the Rohirrim." He gave her a crooked half-smile that seemed very un-Elvish. "I heard the others in the Square calling out your name."

"Who goes?!" Called a young Man’s voice. It sounded like Marsil.

Thranduil stopped and gazed down the length of his nose at the bloodied, battle-weary youth before him. "I am Thranduil of Eryn Lasgalen," he said, his voice dripping with arrogant impatience. "Let me pass!"

Someone tossed a torch that landed five feet from the Elvenking’s doe skin boots. It illuminated the glowering face of Legolas’ father. Marsil stepped into the light, lowering his bow.

"You pardon, my Lord," said the young Man humbly. "We had to be sure. I will take you to the King."

"I care not to see your King, boy!" Thrunduil snapped ungraciously. "Take me to my son!"

Marsil jumped visibly and bowed again. "Follow me, my Lord."

The clay brick stair that led to the north end of Craft Street and the Carpenter’s Guild House wheeled by dizzily. Men and women and children ran back and forth, bearing sloshing bucket after bucket of water. The red glaring light of the flames that were greedily engulfing the Guild House hurt Eowyn’s eyes.

"You are very rude for an Elf," she said muzzily.

The Elvenking gave a brief bark of laughter. "Aye, child! My manners, or lack thereof, have become legend among the sons of Gondor now that---"

"Stand down!" Aragorn’s voice roared angrily. "Stand down, I say! Back away from him! I will deal personally with the man who harms him!"

Some instinct sent a tremor of apprehension through Thranduil’s broad chest and he quickened his pace. They rounded the north corner of the burning Guild House to the ivory shrouded edge of Bright Street. A low, snarling cry of a wounded animal, Legolas’ voice, confirmed Eowyn’s fear of what they would find. Thranduil halted and what he saw froze him in place.

Legolas knelt in a half-crouch, bent double, his lean frame trembling helplessly. His hands terminated in gore-covered claws. As he raised his head, perhaps in response to something Aragorn had just whispered to him, Eowyn saw his eyes were glowing amber and slitted like cat’s eyes. Aragorn knelt beside him fearlessly, one hand clasping the Elf’s clawed hand. Aragorn’s men hovered about them anxiously, obeying their king’s command to leave Legolas be, but terrified the Elf might rend their lord asunder at any moment.

"Come back, Legolas!" Aragorn was saying softly. "Come back to yourself!"

Legolas shuddered and uttered another feral howl of despair. He teeth were distended, the long sharp incisors of a predator.

Thranduil dumped Eowyn on her feet in one fluid motion and moved forward, his face a portrait of sorrow and rage. Eowyn tottered after him to the corner alcove where Legolas and Aragorn knelt, ringed by dozen a soldiers of Gondor. Thranduil pushed his way through the human gauntlet and caught Aragorn’s eye before approaching slowly. Aragorn looked stunned and relieved at the sight of the King of Mirkwood. He beckoned Legolas’ father forward. Carefully, making no sudden motions, Thranduil knelt beside his son’s quaking form. Eowyn stood in the circle of soldiers surrounding them, her heart in her mouth, as Thranduil lay a hand upon his son’s cheek and spoke so softly she could not hear the words.

Legolas’ yellow gaze focused on his father’s face for a moment in uncomprehending anguish, a low warning growl rumbling in his chest. And then a shaft of sunlight, the first weak light of dawn, brushed over his face and he gasped. He entire body convulsed and sweet, blessed lucidity flowed back into his eyes.

"A---a---ada?" He faltered, sagging weakly to one side.

Thranduil made a noise that lay somewhere between a sob and an oath. He drew his son into his strong embrace and held him close as Legolas’ body slowly shifted back to normal, wracked with pain and silent sobs.

Eowyn moved forward as though drawn by a Dwarvish magnet. She knelt awkwardly beside Aragorn, clasping her hands together to stop herself from reaching out, from flying to Legolas’ side. She knew that, for the moment, Legolas needed comfort only Thranduil could give. However many decades or centuries passed since the nightmares of childhood, Poppa was always Poppa.

A warm hand pressed against her forehead. Aragorn was peering at her closely with a healer’s assessing eye.

"I am all right," she lied softly.

"I am a fool!" His iron gray eyes were full of apology. "I should have foreseen what would happen if the three of you faced bloodshed and battle!"

Her eyes widened. "Is Gimli---?"

"He is well,’ Aragorn smiled without mirth. "He left in the midst of the fighting to bear an extra Shard to Eomer’s company. Your brother saw what was happening to Gimli as the fighting grew fiercer. Eomer cold-cocked him. He will wake in an hour or two with a terrible head ache, but he took less harm than you or Legolas." He shook his head. "We were nearly overwhelmed here. They began dousing us with oil and lobbed stones at our Shard-bearer’s from on high. We broke open the doors of the Guild House when the fire got out of hand, but they did not attack the women and children. They came for me. Legolas---" Aragorn grimaced. "He beat them off of me when they would have carried me away to their queen. He used his long knives at first, but then he…." Aragorn sighed tiredly.

"He changed," Thranduil said in a flat, cold voice. "You threw my son, the Dwarf and this maid of the Rohirrim into the mix of battle and they succumbed to bloodlust. Your ignorance has re-envoked the Change in all of them!"

"Adar," Legolas said weakly. "Please, do not." He was struggling to sit, easing himself reluctantly out of his father’s arms. "It was Aragorn’s healing that drew us back from the abyss. But for him, you would have arrived to find us as cold and dead as the monsters we fought tonight. There is precious little lore to be had on this malady for those who have not seen it first hand." He eyed his father pointedly. "As you saw it first hand long ago. Adar, how did not know to come?"

"I heard your soul cry out when she broke your will," Thranduil said softly. He touched his son’s face, almost reflexively, when Legolas shuddered at that memory. "I saw a flash of her face in your mind an instant before her darkness descended upon you. Thuringwethil!" He glanced back at Aragorn, grudging apology in his proud gaze. "In plainest truth, I am to blame for your ignorance, for I fought these creatures when they plagued us at the Havens of Sirion. Elrond, your tutor in lore, remembered bits of it, but he was only a child at the time. Your foster-father pestered me for centuries to tell him all I knew so that he might write it down for posterity, but the memories were so evil I could not bring myself to speak of them. Now, it seems, I shall pay dearly for my weakness." He shook his head angrily, one hand still unconsciously resting on Legolas’ shoulder as though he feared to let him out of arm’s reach. "She and her scions preyed mostly on the Edain who dwelt side by side with our folk at the Havens, Lord Tuor’s distant kinsmen. She tried many times to change an Elf into one of her kind, but the breaking of their minds always killed her captives." His eyes turned to Legolas. "I can scarcely believe you are still alive, my son, though I will sing hymns of praise that it is so for all my days!"

Legolas’ hand sought Eowyn’s and she took it without thinking. "Eowyn saved me, Adar," he told his father. "She has an immunity to Simiasha---Thuringwethil---that Mithrandir set in her mind. She imparted that immunity to me, and in doing so, freed me."

Thranduil had gone very still, his gaze boring into his son’s, seeing many things that were unsaid behind the windows of Legolas’ eyes. Even indirectly, Eowyn winced at the blinding power in that stare.

"You took her blood," Thranduil said, terrible suspicion growing in his face.

"Aye," Legolas answered simply. "I was Thuringwethil’s creature for a time, Adar, bound to her will, drowning inside her evil. She would have made me her slave and consort. I took Eowyn’s blood when I lost myself in the first madness of thirst. She saved my soul."

Thranduil swallowed, his features so drawn with apprehension he looked old. The Elvenking turned the unrelenting power of his faze upon Eowyn and what little Legolas might have hidden from his father’s all-seeing vision must have been pathetically evident in Eowyn’s eyes, her face, her translucent mortal heart. He pinned her in place with his eyes like a butterfly in one of Fallah’s insect collections. He seemed to be sifting through every facet of her inner self, weighing and judging, searching for flaws and weaknesses. She held his eyes, refusing to be cowed.

"And what did you give her in return?" Thranduil asked of his son, not taking his eyes from Eowyn.

"All that was mine to give," Legolas whispered.

Thranduil was silent. He did not seemed enraged as she had feared he would be. "I understand," he said heavily. His eyes were full of sorrow and pity as he regarded Eowyn and his son. "And I grieve for you both."

Eowyn wondered foggily what he meant by that as Aragorn lay one hand upon the back of her aching head and brought it away bloody. She remembered nothing else before consciousness deserted her.

Eowyn woke with a start to the sound of pouring rain and the babble of many voices. She was lying on a pallet in the main warehouse storeroom of New Bakery. She sat slowly and saw that the main floor had been converted into a makeshift recovery ward and surgery. Fallah was sitting beside her, her large almond eyes red-rimmed with weeping. The Apothecary’s Daughter held a cup of vinegar water and began silently dabbing at a cut over Eowyn’s left brow, silent tears rolling down her dirty face.

"Your head wound has healed almost completely in the last few hours," she sniffled. "I have been sitting here trying to understand why this little nick on your face has not." She met Eowyn’s eyes. "Eowyn, I am s-sorry---!"

"Do not," Eowyn stopped her gently. She took her friend’s trembling hands in her own. "There is nothing to apologize for. I scared you all half to death." O Sweet Lady, she wished she did not have to ask this next question. "Fallah, how many have we lost?"

"A third of the Watch is slain," Fallah whispered. "Suni is well and Shaeri. Little Insis was sorely wounded, but she will recover. Your brother is well. He came to check on you while you were sleeping and he does not have a scratch on him. But he lost nearly half his men last night and---and we have not found most of the bodies. Master Gimli has recovered. He came with Legolas when he carried you here four hours ago." She sighed, a tired little sob. "Good Lord Hurin is dead. Camah and Sokkora of Queen’s Guard. The boy Timhad of Moussah’s folk and old Hatab the Horsetrainer." She paused and inhaled, her breast shaking with the sobs caught in her throat. "Somal is slain, Eowyn! I---I tried to save him! Elessar used all the healing lore and Elvish magic he knew. But---but he just died. It is not fair that he survived Pelennor Fields at thirteen years of age, one of forty men who returned home of the thousands who were taken. He---he should have live long and had many children and died with a dozen grandsons and daughters. And now, all my family is gone. I am the last of the children of Somala north of the Earth’s Girdle and the last of my family in all the world!" Her face was so full of wretched sorrow that Eowyn began to weep as well. "And---and Ikako…she still lives, but---but all of Craft Street went up in the fire that took the Carpenter’s Guildhouse. I do not know why she did not leave her workshop while there was still time!"

"Show me," Eowyn said hoarsely.

Ikako was lying apart from the general ward of wounded in a quiet anteroom that had been a storage room for cane sugar until recently. Now, it was a quiet wing for the dying. The air hung heavy with the sickening scent of sweet cane syrup and burnt flesh. And Ikako---

Eowyn knelt woodenly beside the smith’s deathbed. Ikako was alive, but in truth, Eowyn could not see how she still clung to life. Half of her body was whole and strong as ever. The other half was burned, her flesh melted to the bone in some places. Suni sat by the cot, her face a blank study of stoic grief. Ikako and Suni, Eowyn knew, had been the fastest of friends all their lives. Eowyn saw to her shock that Ikako was awake and aware.

"She refused Fallah’s opiate," Suni said quietly. "She tarries for you, my Captain." She squeezed Ikako’s good hand in her own. "She is here, sister. Eowyn has come."

"Done," Ikako rasped, turned her head minutely in Eowyn’s direction. "It is done."

Clasped in the dying smith’s ruined hand was the last thing Eowyn has asked of her friend, the final piece of the weapon Eowyn had conceived to destroy the mother of the blood drinkers.

"She would not release it to any save you," Suni said.

Eowyn took the precious gift of metal work that had surely cost Ikako her life as she labored upon her task, heedless of Craft Street was burning down around her. "The katana…" Ikako whispered. "Lying in my shop…finished also." Somehow, she managed a small wicked smile, the same she had given Eowyn when she had confided her plan to the smith. "Wish I could see her face…." Her voice was fading as she released her failing hold upon life. "….when you kill her…." Her words ended in a soft weaze as her half melted lungs released her final breath in a rattling sigh that sounded like a dry chuckle.

Ikako was dead.

Eowyn watched as Suni bent forward and kissed the burned cheek of the empty shell on the pallet. "So begins my second day as Queen," she said brokenly. Fallah lowered her face into her hands and wept once more.

Ikako had dwelt on Craft Street all her life, caring for her widower father, a respectable spinster at thirty years of age when she met her husband a year before the Great War. Will of Laketown had taken a partnership in her father’s smithy after he met and wed the love of his life, only to be conscripted by Haradoun’s pressgang four months later. He had died at Pelennor Fields and Suni had confided to Eowyn that she was sure the greatest part of Ikako had died with him.

"He will greet you wither you go, my friend," Eowyn whispered.

She stumbled out of the thick stench of that closed room, taking her leave of her friends with numb words of apology. Across the broad span of the warehouse floor, Eowyn saw Aragorn bent over a wounded soldier, frowning with concentration. Aragorn had most likely not slept a wink since dawn. He must have set up this healing ward with Fallah’s help, she thought distantly.

A faint song, so soft and beautiful it might have been a sweet memory of Legolas’ voice as he sang to her in their bamboo cottage, reached her ears. She followed it out the porter’s entrance to the awning-veiled Shopman’s Street. It was miraculously untouched by fire. The flower boxes that had always decorated every other storefront were bright and cheerful, the shops unmarred by flame or violence. It made the house of wounded and dying inside seem like a nightmare.

The song had ended. A small group of Elves were lifting the lifeless body of their comrade, bearing him away. She watched them silently. They were so sunk in their own quiet sorrow they did not seem to notice her presence.

"A Wood Elf should not breathe his last indoors," a voice remarked solemnly.

Thranduil of Eryn Lasgalen was sitting in one of Osha the Baker’s black oak rocking chairs. In his hand, he held a small bird. It lay in the gentle cup of his palm, breathing shallowly. He whispered something soft to the tiny stunned creature and its eyes fluttered, wings stirring.

"Could Aragorn not save him?" She asked, staring out at the hanging baskets of petunias that were straining upward, greeting the fall of summer rain like a lover’s embrace.

"His beloved was slain as we made our way from the Bakery to the Square," Thranduil murmured. "Of the five score warriors in my company, only two were slain outright. But three more are missing." He sighed wearily. "Gilros and Sirluin were inseparable since they were boys together. When he learned Sirluin had fallen, Gilros began to fade. Our tie to the flesh is more fragile than that of the Edain. When our hearts are broken, when they shatter beyond all repair, we simply----" He opened his hand and the dazed bird took flight, winging its way down the covered street. He stood and faced her. And once again, it was as though his eyes held her in place, as though he physically restrained her from looking away. She met his eyes with effort, her vision blurred, her frame trembling with the strain of simply staying upright. But she could not, in truth, have said whether it was physical weakness or her own grief that was to blame. "It was selfish folly on my part to spend five lives and risk a hundred to save one warrior. It was a father’s decision, not a king’s."

She swallowed. "Where is Legolas?"

"I know not," he said. "We had words an hour ago, he and I."

She began to turn away, thinking coldly that this was the last thing in Middle Earth that should claim even a minute of the precious hours of daylight left to them. "I must go to Craft Street," she said woodenly. "Forgive me, my Lord, but this conversation must wait until there is time for such luxuries!"

She stepped off the boarded porter’s ramp that the millers used to wheel in large deliveries. She stumbled, her knees turned to jelly. Thranduil moved forward with easy grace and caught her. She fought a wave of anger and hot shame as he eased her into the rocking chair, kneeling before her. He passed one smooth hand over her brow. "Your skin is like ice, child. You should not be on your feet."

"I am sliding downward into death and damnation!" She said in an agonized whisper. "I will not meet it lying down." She met his eyes sharply, suddenly remembering his words about the Havens of Sirion. "You know more of their secrets than Aragorn, or anyone still living. Will we be free of her darkness once Simiasha is dead?" She steeled herself for the answer.

He frowned as though the simple act of sifting through those memories was still painful, even millennia later. "The Lady Galadriel treated the few we found still living in those nests. If they had been taken by one of Thuringwethil’s scions---beasts she had granted leave to begin their own bloodlines in the days when she dwelt with Sauron on Tol-in-Gaurhoth---they recovered fully after their sire was slain. Were all of you forced to sup her blood directly?"

"Only Legolas," she said quietly. "She---she---I could not save him!"

He took her hand. "You need not speak of it. He told me the full tale." He smiled. "Your metal is the stuff of which legends are forged, Eowyn of Rohan. And I do not speak with only a father’s pride I say the same is true of my son. The Elvish Hunter must have been one of her oldest and strongest get, for you are as deeply infected as Legolas, though your contagion is a generation removed from the source."

"He made me drink more than once," she said dully. "I do not remember how many times. His name was Morsul." She said the name softly. Elbereth, how could she feel so much sorrow for one who had done her so much evil?

He saw it as well and gripped her hand a little tighter. "The affection you are feeling when you think of him is not real, glorfinniel," he told her adamantly. "It is because, for the moment, he is still a part of you. It will fade when your blood is finally cleansed of his poison."

"No," she said softly. "No, I pitied him when he told me his tale. He was Captain of Thingol Graycloak’s guard and later the protector of the Lady Elwing. He went tearing off into the wild to rescue the children of his mistress from the sons of---"

"Laersul," Thranduil said. He was staring into her face, but his eyes had turned inward. She was startled to see tears gathering there. "His name was Laersul," Thranduil whispered.

"Summer Wind," Eowyn repeated the name. She stared helplessly as silent tears began to trail down the Elvenking’s face. "He took my blood and so remembered himself at the end," she told him gently. "He died fighting to free us. With his last words, he told me how I might free Legolas from her control."

"I have thought him at peace in Mandos for two long ages of the world," Thranduil said in a stricken voice. "He was my father’s dearest friend. He taught me to wield a sword."

"He is at peace now," Eowyn said.

"Aye," Thranduil said gruffly after a moment. "I would pay much to know what manner of protection spell Mithrandir set in your mind, child. You freed Legolas from Thuringwethil’s control in the same way you freed Laersul---by usurping her rule of blood, I think. It is as I thought at first. You and Legolas our bound together in the same way Thuringwethil and her offspring are bound. I wondered when we first met how you came to speak such flawless Sindarin."

"I do not speak---"

"Not one word of the Common Tongue have you spoken since we began talking," he said gently. She could only gape at him. "For the moment, you and my son are as two parts of one whole. It is as though he is the child of your own dark bloodline, bound to you by the blood you share, mind and heart." He spoke with such deep, wilting relief she frowned, puzzling over the true meaning of his words.

"What do you mean by that, my Lord?" She asked slowly.

He regarded her steadily. "We need not discuss this until you are feeling better---"

"I am as well as I am likely to feel until sunset," she said bluntly. "Tell me what is in your mind!"

"If Simiasha is slain," he said after a moment’s hesitation, "the poison in your veins with wither and depart once its ultimate source is abolished. And as it does, the bond of feeling between you and my son may fade as well."

She stared back at him, blanched and weak, feeling as though the earth had just opened up to swallow her. "Is that your belief, my Lord?" She asked in a cold, brittle voice. "Or your hope?"

"Both," he said in quiet resignation. His Elven-gray eyes were full of compassion, yet underneath she saw something else. Something fearful and almost desperate. "Do not mistake me, daughter of Eorl. I do not look down upon you or deem you baseborn and too lowly to be my daughter."

"I know your mind, my Lord," she said. "You fear, as do I, that he will grieve forever when I pass from this world."

"Nay, glorfinniel," the Elvenking said, his deep voice grave, like a death knell to all her tenuous, selfish hopes. "It is my fear that when your days are spent, he will lie down beside you and die."

Her chest seemed to have shrunken in on itself. She could not breathe. "Like Gilros?"

"Not so fortunate as Gilros," Thranduil said relentlessly. "For he shall be reunited with his beloved by and by, as will I. Do you know the history of Beren and Luthien?"

She nodded mutely.

"It is not history to me, but memory," he said. "When Carcharoth came harrying to the borders of Doriath, the Silmaril burning him alive from the inside, I was part of the King’s hunting party that went forth to slay him. We bore Beren back to fair Luthien, clinging to life so that he might breathe his dying breath against his lover’s lips. We all watched, weeping helplessly, as he died in Luthien’s arms. She followed him by less than a quarter hour. Do you know why, glorfinniel?"

"Because she believed Beren had passed beyond the veil of this world," Eowyn said numbly. Her throat felt raw. "To the hidden fate that is prepared for Men. Because, in death, the Edain and the Eldar are parted beyond the ending of the world. Forever. I know this, my Lord. Or I knew it. Perhaps my own selfishness let me forget. If I could unmake his love for his sake, I would do so. I would rather see him alive and happy than have him as my own, knowing what must come. I love him so much my heart seizes at the thought of him in pain, so much I can well believe this is some part of the influence of our shared blood. For it came upon me suddenly and it seems like a madness at times, overwhelming me with its power. I am terrified to hold his heart in my hands, for I know his heart is his life. I fear for my death for his sake more than my own." She clenched her hands at her sides, trying to stay her body’s trembling. She recalled suddenly, as though it were a piece of a sweet dream, how during their last days in the cottage, all language had begun to desert them. And yet they had communicated with absolute clarity. She had known his every thought, every nuance of emotion and impulse. There had been moments during love when it had seemed their minds, the very essence of his soul and hers, swam together, so that she could not tell where she ended and he began.

Had any of it been real?

"I cannot think what I should do," she said tonelessly. "You are older and far wiser, my Lord. Tell me what I should do! If his love fades with Simiasha’s power, I will kiss him goodbye and take comfort in the knowledge that he is better off without his love for me. But---but if he loves me in truth---"

"Then…." He sighed sadly. "Then love him, glorfinniel. Love him all your days, for he will not stop loving you, even should you leave him. That is the best council I can give, for though I have lived long, I have never been numbered among the Wise. I am a warrior and the son of a warrior, who became a king because all of his betters were slain. If your love proves true, child, do not let fear of what shall come sully your joy in him. And as for the afterworld….we must trust in Eru’s benevolence, in all that we hold to be good and holy. Have faith, and believe that your song will not end upon a despairing note."

"You are wrong to eschew the name ‘Wise’, my Lord," she said. In spite of their peril and the weight of her grief for the dead that sat on her heart like a millstone, she was able to smile at him through the tears and rain on her face.

He helped her to Craft Street, guiding her still-weak steps to the charred husk of Ikako’s smithy. He helped her sift through the ruins, digging through ash and charred wood made muddy by the steady downpour.

Finally, she found what she sought. She drew it from the black sludge and the filth fell away from it as though fearful of the shining, deadly blade. It was Ikako’s masterpiece, and now, there would never be another. She held it in her right hand, whispering in silent prayer.

"Legend, indeed," Thranduil said softly.

"She will come for Aragorn tonight," Eowyn told him fiercely. She stood, clutching both pieces of her weapon, one in each hand. "She will find a way through our defenses and try to take him. I shall greet her with this when she arrives!"

The King of Eryn Lasgalen smiled wolfishly and nodded.

The Price of Freedom

By Erin Lasgalen

FORWARD AND WARNINGS: R for content. This story is an AU. With the exception of the first chapter it is set post-ROTK. It will contain heavy violence, the mention of rape though no actual depictions, and sexual content—again, no gory details.

DISCLAIMER: This story was written solely for the purpose of non-profit entertainment. All canon characters and places therein are the property of Tolkien Estates and New Line Cinema

Sundown was six hours away and counting. Eowyn trudged through the day of endless tasks, knowing she would regain strength and clarity of mind when the shadows lengthened. When Suni came to her, her face a mask of sorrow, to tell her she would take the command of the City from Eowyn’s hands come sunset, Eowyn only nodded absently and continued on with her work.  She knew she would be a liability as a commander if the madness took her again.  She would be in no state to lead anything when the Sun set.  And in truth, the question as to whether she would lose herself once more when battle was joined seemed a mute point. It would all be decided tonight, one way of the other. She had no magic, no elvish foresight, but she knew this with the same surety she knew the Sun would set in the West. She did not need Aragorn or Thranduil to confirm that she had lost most of the ground the aethelas tea had bought her. But she did not worry over this greatly; she was too busy.

It had rained all through the early morning, a gift from the gods that had saved Rhunballa from burning to the ground. But now, storm clouds hung low and unmoving above the valley, like black, becalmed ships. They turned the sky an ominous shade of darkest blue-gray, veiling the Sun, which might have seared her skin. After a short round table discussion with Suni and the Lords of Rhunballa’s foreign defenders, they began the task of evacuating every child, non-combatant and all the wounded who were in any shape to be moved to the relative safety of the great storage houses that dotted the endless, water-logged soy and rice fields. The City was a flammable beacon that would draw the Hunters to it. Moreover, the enemy had shown less interest in carrying off the people who had run from the burning of the Royal Villa and the Carpenter’s Guildhouse than in the warriors who defended them.

“I do not doubt they would have slain us all if they had been able,” Eowyn said grimly, “but, I think she wants warriors, not children and old women.”

 “Aye,” Gimli rumbled. “I am sure she is thinking the helpless ones can be gobbled up when all their defenders are taken or slain!”

 “It is in my mind that Simiasha will lead the attack tonight,” Eowyn said darkly, ignoring the uneasy looks on the faces of those around her. “In part, because her blood still flows in my veins, and though I cannot see her thoughts, I have some vague sense of her mind. But also, I believe last night was only to tenderize our defenses and force us to spend the bulk of our flammable armory. And to take as many of us as she could for her own.”

Many had been slain last night. But far too many were simply missing, spirited off into the night to be changed, for Simiasha would need many soldiers for the army she wished Aragorn to lead. Lord Hurin and Somal had been lucky to die clean deaths as Men.

“She wants me,” Aragorn said flatly. “I believe Eowyn is right. The Huntress will come for her true prey tonight. If I leave Rhunballa or if I am slain, she will still kill or change everyone in this valley. If I stay in Rhunballa, I draw her Hunters away from those who are sequestered in the rice fields. But I will not hide like a mouse in a hole. If I stand in plain view tonight, in the center of a gauntlet of Shards, it may be that we will prey upon them!”

“You cannot use yourself as bait!” Eomer exclaimed in outrage.

 “He is right!” Suni said clearly. “There is now nowhere to hide from them. If they take him, we are lost. If he is slain, the Queen will gut us all out of thwarted rage. The only option is to fight.”

All that day, she did not see or speak with Legolas.  If there had been less to do, less strain to fight the steady, advancing pace of the Sun, more time to consider, she would have found this odd.  If there had been fewer tasks to oversee, she might have sought Legolas out.  But there was no time and no opportunity.  As the day drew on, she heard from Gimli that Legolas was helping move the wounded to the relative safety of the rice fields, or from Fallah that she had only just missed him as he bore one of the last caches of fire bottles to the Square.

And so it was that, by half past five in the afternoon, with less than four hours of Sun left, she found herself standing by the stone circle of the Fountain Square, watching the City’s surviving defenders who were spread out around the Square and the soggy remains of the Villa.  The stagnant black clouds that covered the valley had yielded no more rain, though the distant rumble of thunder never ceased.  Eowyn had watched the thunderheads all day with growing unease.  They veiled the Sun so thoroughly all the long, muggy afternoon had seemed like twilight.

“Where is Aragorn?” She called to her brother. 

He broke from the knot of Riders that surrounded him beneath the meager shade of the Queen’s Guard half-burned porch and moved toward her.  He held his helm in one hand, a water flask in another.  She followed his gaze back to the gaggle of Gondorian officers, feeling a pang of sorrow when she realized Lord Hurin was not among them. 

“He was here a few moments ago,” he answered.  “Perhaps he went off with Gimli and Legolas to look at the new piece of cleverness your Mistress Fallah has devised.  Something that uses the Shards, I think Legolas said.”

He grinned, watching her face closely.  “You nearly sigh when I do but speak the Elf’s name, sister!”

“I do not!” She snapped, frowning at him irritably as he bent and filled his water skin from the Fountain’s pool.  “Aragorn should not be out of sight, even this many hours from true dusk.  This dark sky is dangerous, Eomer.”

“You are thinking the enemy might be able to attack with the Sun shrouded so?” Eomer stood, frowning worriedly.  “Well, let us seek him out and steer him hither, as much as one may steer or command the King of the West.”  He took a long swig of water and grimaced, wiping his brow.  “This miserable heat is making my head swim!  I will look for him on Physician’s Street.”

Eowyn nodded.  “I will check the street on the other side of New Bakery.”

She was already moving.  There was an odd tension in her neck, a knot of  terrible apprehension. A roll of sepulchrous thunder ricocheted from one side of the valley to the other.  Eowyn glanced upward, her stomach coiled in a ball of inexplicable fear.

She cast about with the extra sense, the hunting sense Morsul’s tainted blood had given her, searching for the blazing star that was the flame of Aragorn’s life force.  It out shown even Thranduil’s in its raw power and brilliance, though Aragorn had yet to live a single century.  A King among kings, Moussah had called him.

She found him with as little effort as one would find a bonfire in a field full of matchsticks.  She did not pause to mourn the return of this power, another sure sign that she had lost a goodly portion of the humanity Aragorn’s treatment had restored to her.  She followed the beacon the was the King of Gondor like a bloodhound trailing a scent, weaving her way around New Bakery and onto Market Street.  As she rounded the last of the abandoned vendors’ stalls, she stopped.  And sighed with relief, feeling a fool.

Aragorn was sitting upon the one of the clay brick benches that ringed the Market Street well.  He lifted the ladle from the bucket of water he had just drawn and dumped it over his head with a sigh of relief.  He glanced at her, watching her approach, and grinned like a boy.

“You are frowning at me like a tutor scolding an errant school boy,” he said with a soft chuckle.

“I am?” She asked, feeling suddenly embarrassed. 

His grin widened.  “My water flask was empty and, unlike Eomer, I am familiar with the Eastern customer of spitting in the fountain pool for good luck.”

Eowyn grinned and shook her head when he offered her a ladle full of water.  Despite the sweltering heat, she had not thirsted all day.  Such would not be the case come twilight, she thought with a shudder.  Aragorn was watching her face, perhaps seeing the dark turn her thoughts had taken.  If he did, he chose not to question her.

“I fear,” he said sadly, “that Kingship has softened my stamina.  I have not been in this part of the world in many years, and I had forgotten how much I loathed the summers.”

“If the Sun were shining,” she told him, “you would have twice the cause to grieve.”

“Aye.”  He glanced upward, his grin fading.  “This black sky is wrong, Eowyn.  I think it is some malicious art of the Queen’s.  Sauron and Saruman were both of the Ainur and they could weave unnatural storms such as this.”

“We should go back to the Square,” she said tensely.

He nodded, looking almost sheepish.  “I will tell you a secret, my Lady,” he said, filling his water skin in the bucket as he spoke.  “There are many good things about being a king.  Being the constant center of attention is not one of them.”

She let that draw another grin from her.  “Have you seen Legolas and Gimli?”

He frowned and shook his head.  “I saw Gimli an hour ago.  Legolas I have not seen all day.”

She fought to hide the wrench of impractical need to see Legolas, to speak to him once more before night fell.  He would very probably be waiting for them when they returned to the Square.  It was childish to be so angst-ridden that she had not seen him since dawn, but she could not help it.

“You will see him before sundown, Eowyn,” Aragorn told her gently.

“Am I so transparent, my Lord?” She smiled tremulously.

“I understand all too well what you are feeling, my friend,” he said solemnly.  “None better.  It is a wonderful and perilous thing to breach such boundaries in love.”  He paused as though considering whether to say more.

“I think you are only now just beginning to understand the price he will pay for loving you.”

She clenched her jaw shut and her hands trembled as she thought of Thranduil’s words, of the doubt he had set in her heart.  Could it be that none of these feelings were real?  A month ago, Legolas has been a sweet memory of kindness and ethereal beauty in the midst of the horrors of the War.  Now, he was all the world to her and she to him.  How could it be possible that they could love so quickly, so completely?  Even had she been sure of her own heart, it would seem like madness to believe that one such as he could give himself, body and soul, to a mortal woman he barely knew without some sort of influence to rush him forward. 

And if it was true, if he loved her as wholly and truly as she loved him---

She stayed the tremors in her hands, reminding herself that even Thranduil, who had much more than a vested interest that her love and Legolas’ prove a mere bi-product of their shared blood, had not been sure.  ‘If your love prove true’, he had said.  There was no way to know, no surety to which she could cling.  So, she clung to hope alone, for it was all she had, selfish though she knew it to be.  She knew in her gut the King of Eryn Lasgalen spoke truth when he said Legolas might not survive her death after a mortal lifetime as her side.  But, for the moment, for the duration of this struggle, she needed that hope to fight for.  For the moment, she needed that hope to retain the will to draw breath.

‘If you do not think it an imposition,” Aragorn went on gently, “let one who has already walked this path advise you.  Do not let worry for the future mar your joy in the present.  Such matches have been made only a handful of times in all the long years since Beren and Luthien walked the earth.  In every case I know of, a way has been made.  Our destinies are sundered from those of the Eldar until the song of Iluvatar is complete.  But He is the very definition of love, Eowyn, and thus He is incapable of cruelty.  You must believe that a way shall be made.”

She smiled, feeling good, feeling warm inside and full of hope for the first time all day.  “Aragorn,” she said quietly.  “I am very glad you are my friend.”

To this, he only smiled and raised the ladle of water to his lips, drinking deep.  Then he stood, shaking his head, flinging the water from his dark hair.

“Come, then!” He said.  “Let us go---“ He broke off, frozen like a statue.  All the color drained from his face and he swayed on his feet.  Eowyn caught him by the shoulder, steadying him, her heart in her mouth.

“Something---“ Aragorn gasped.  “Something foul in the water!”  He gagged, trying in vain to wretch.

Eowyn plunged her hand into the water pail, taking a sip, rolling the taste around in her mouth without swallowing.  Cold horror suffused her, freezing her heart, as the coppery taste of blood filled her mouth.  It was faint, so diluted human senses would never detect it.  But it was there, coupled with the burning, tingling aftertaste of---of---

A series of images leapt to her mind, painting a picture with merciless clarity. Of Eomer wiping his sweaty face, muttering how the heat made his head swim an instant after he drank from the Fountain, of the women of the Watch and the Men of Gondor, Rohan and Harad drinking deep from skins and water pails the Rhunballani had offered them as they labored to evacuate the children, the old, and as many of the wounded who could be moved and refortify the half-burned City. 

She spat out the poison in her mouth and gripped Aragorn by the shoulders.  “They have tainted the water with their blood, with her blood!  Oh Elbereth, Aragorn!  Every soldier in the City may be infected now!  Sick it up!  By all that is holy, sick the poison up if you can!”

“I---I cannot!“  Aragorn gasped, sagging in her arms.  “Trying….but I cannot!”

Merciful Iluvatar, the Huntress had taken Aragorn and the entire City without striking a single blow!  Had the attack last night been nothing more than a diversion so that they might pollute the wells with the filth of her blood?

Cold tittering laughter filled her mind.  Poor, slow-witted child!  Simiasha’s voice sang in her head like dissonant silver bells.  He is mine now!  I will take him, I will change him, and I will rule the earth with him at my side!

Aragorn bent double, slipping from her arms to his knees, his hands on both sides of his head as though he were trying to block out some unholy noise.

“Eowyn!  Eowyn, I hear her!” He cried in a strangled voice.  “Her voice is inside me! She---she---!”  He broke off with a hoarse moan.

“Aragorn!”  She gripped him by the shoulders, wrestling him back to his feet.  “Get up!  We must get you away from here now!”

Another mocking trill of sweet malice.  And where will you go, my foolish girl?  Simiasha cooed.  To whom will you flee for help?  Every soul that supped my blood this day is now my creature, though they do not yet know it.  I have but to flex my will and they will all do my bidding! 

A rush of power, like that sound of mighty obsidian wings taking flight, blew past Eowyn like a desert sand storm, leaving her untouched.  On every side, from every corner of the City, she heard their cries, thousands of voices, as the Queen of Blood and Darkness set her will upon them.  And Aragorn cried out with them, the sort of mortal scream a man gives when a blade invades his body, tearing apart all that is good and healthy inside.

In another moment, they will give chase, my girl! Simiasha hissed.  For Elessar and for you.  Who among my new sons shall I command to use you first?  Perhaps your comely, strapping brother?

Eowyn screamed something obscene and nearly hysterical.  Her heightened senses already told her the screams were dying down, changing to low, pain-filled moans and angry animal snarls.  Aragorn sagged against her, breathing like a man in a smoke-filled house, fighting with all his might.  She could outrun them all if need be, but it would not matter where they went.  The Huntress would find them wherever they hid, however far they ran while her blood still raged in Aragorn’s veins.

She drew her belt knife and sliced open the tip of two fingers. 

“Aragorn!” She said harshly, listening for the sound of running feet.

The City was still filled with sobs of pain and anger. Even the Huntress could not invade the minds of so many instantaneously.  No one was on their feet yet.  Aragorn raised his head groggily and she held her blood-tipped fingers before his eyes.  His eyes widened, but he nodded his understanding.  Grimacing with weak disgust, he took her fingers in his mouth.  He swallowed once. Twice.  And upon the third gulp, his hand curled into her hair, clutching the back of her neck with renewed strength.  His strong arms tightened around her, bringing her flush against his body, and for an instant, her body kindled, a flash fire of molten animal desire.  His lips found hers, hot and demanding, and he tasted of sweet pipeweed and dark, unbridled need.  For one brief, heatstruck moment, she lost herself in the raw male scent of him, in the crackling sense of his great power that blazed in her mind’s eye like a star.

And then it was gone.

He blinked at her, weak but fully alert, his gray eyes slowly widening with horror and apology.  And terrible, terrible guilt. 

“Eowyn…” He said hoarsely.  “Forgive---“

She touched his face with both hands.  “It was the blood,” she said gently.  “It was not you!  You have done no wrong.  It was not you!”

He stared at her a moment, ash-pale and shaken.  And then he sighed like a man reprieved from the headsman’s block.  Eowyn’s throat tightened as she saw the tears of relief that sprang to his eyes.  His sorrow, his guilt, his wilting relief all flowed out of him and into her through the blood he had taken.  In the two or three seconds before the sense of him faded from her mind, Eowyn saw the whole of his heart with a clarity that Aragorn himself perhaps had not perceived. His Arwen, the beautiful Elven maid he had loved all his life, was his North, his South, and all points in between.  The mere thought that he might have betrayed her love, even with a single illicit kiss, was enough to set him weeping, enough to fell him to his knees.  Arwen was the touchstone of his life. 

But the blood could not call to that which had no niche somewhere in the darkest, most hidden desires of the heart.  Aragorn did not love Eowyn, though she was dear to him, but a part of him had wanted her from the first. A part of him still wanted her.  She was the earthborn call of his mortal blood and warrior’s spirit, the burn of kindred desire that drew like to like.  His waking mind did not know this, and it would crush his great heart if ever he looked this hidden truth in the face.

So she shook him lightly, one hand still on his face.  “I am sorry!” She said softly.  “There was no other way to free you from her will. I did not know that taking my blood would draw that reaction with everyone who drank.”

“It is good to know!”  He laughed shakily.  “Though I think Arwen might still have my head if---“

“Go around the other side!” Cried a Man’s voice. 

The sound of running feet, the sense of dozens of people drawing near.  Oh gods, they were on both sides of Market Street!  She spun, looking for an outlet, casting about for an opening in the net that had drawn around them while they were reeling from the effects of Eowyn’s blood in his veins.  She could sense the flickers of scores of people on all sides now.

“We are surrounded!” She said tightly.  “If we fight, we will be killing friends and those we love!”

Aragorn’s eyes lit on the well.  “Eowyn!  It is still hours until sunset.  Have you enough strength to bear us both to the bottom of the well?”

“We are about to find out,” she said grimly.

She thrust her shoulder under his and they climbed to the rim of the well.  They leapt, falling past brick, then stone, they red clay, to the bottom.  They plunged downward, underwater.  She braced Aragorn in her arms, absorbing the shock as her feet struck the bottom of what was little more than fifteen feet of water.  She kicked upward, off the bottom, and their heads broke the surface.  Cool air, the breath of cave air, brushed her face.

“This is no well spring!”  Aragorn said.  “We are in moving current.”

The river!  Eowyn suddenly remembered that vast black ribbon of dark rolling waters that Morsul and his fellows had followed, the unimaginably huge vaulted caverns adorned with shimmering diamonds and luminescent veins of mithril thick as a man’s torso. 

“The source---!” She winced, lowering her voice.  Every wisp of sound seemed magnified.  “The source of Hundred Springs is a great underground river.”

“Then to poison the water in every well, they would have to---“ Aragorn broke off as the sound of voices echoed down from the lip of the well.

“They are not here!” Someone spat in disgust.  Eowyn’s heart cringed when she recognized the voice was Eomer’s.  “My sister has given him her blood and the Mistress can no longer see him.  They could be anywhere!”

“Let them hide another three hours, or four,” Moussah said indifferently.  “When the Mistress rises, we will butcher the women and babes until he shows himself.”

Beside her, Eowyn felt Aragorn tremble with silent rage.

“Be silent!” Suni said angrily.  “She speaks!”  A little silence.  Dimly, Eowyn heard Simiasha’s voice, like a faint snatch of an eavesdropped conversation.  She clenched her teeth, straining to hear, gleaning just enough to learn the gist of the Huntress’ commands.

“Let us be about it then!”  Eomer said harshly. 

They held still as mice listening for the cat’s faint tread.  In the darkness, Aragorn’s face was a tense agony of worry.

“If you give yourself up,” Eowyn said softly, “Simiasha will still kill the old and the very young.”

“I know,” he said.  “That does not make it any easier to bear.  Could you hear her words?”

“Thranduil and his folk are still uninfected!” She said urgently.  “They have simply dropped out of sight.”

Aragorn nodded.  “The Elves would have scented the poison in the water.”

“We must find them before Eomer and the others do!”  She said.  Eowyn closed her eyes, thinking hard, her brow furrowed, her mouth compressed in concentration.  “They did not poison the well from above,” she said slowly.

“The water would have simply flowed away.  You were infected from this well and it is a branch of the great river that flows beneath this valley.  If the Fountain and this well and all the others were tainted, and they are all running water at their bases---“

“Then they tainted the water supply upstream!”  Aragorn exclaimed.  His eyes blazed with sudden realization.  “It is Simiasha’s blood in the water.

She could not have simply poured a cup of her blood into the flood.  The current would have born it away.”

“She has opened a vein upstream from the City and lain herself down in the river,” Eowyn said fiercely.  “She cannot rise for another three hours.  We must find her and kill her before she rises or everyone in this valley is damned!”

Eowyn closed her eyes and sought Thranduil.  He was there, a sharply burning ember of light, though he was far away.  East.  East of the City

and---and---

She caught the impression of Thranduil’s fair face glowering down at Gimli in displeasure and the faint, ghostly sound of the Dwarf’s rusty chuckle.

“Peace, Elvenking!” Gimli was saying.  “I know my way around underground.  Legolas is just up ahead.”

She sought with all her might, scanning outward for the sweet beacon of Legolas’ life-force, but he was not there.  She could not sense him anywhere.  She swallowed, worry knotting in her gut, fogging her good judgement of all else. He would not have drunk the poisoned water but perhaps they had taken him, hurt him.  Perhaps---

No! He was well.  Gimli had just said so, had he not? She tried to push the fear away but it would not depart.  The only thing that would allay it would be to see Legolas with her own eyes.

“We are not alone,” She said finally. “Thranduil and his Elves have gone to ground under the wells also.  Legolas and Gimli are with them!  They are just upstream!”

Aragorn grinned fiercely.  “I think the four of us and a hundred Elvish warriors can put paid to a sleeping demon without much fuss!”

She smiled back, shifting uncomfortably as her skin crawled at the proximity of the weapon strapped to her back, the weapon that would see the Huntress dead if anything in creation could slay her.

They made their way forward, moving along the clay mud edges of the waters where possible, or working their way against the current as fast as they were able.  The cavern never shrank to a crawl space and their way never descended to a flooded tunnel.  They journeyed at a slow cant, Aragorn behind her, his hand clasped firmly in hers for he was blind in the pitch black.  Though they were by no means in constant darkness.  Most of the way held some faint sliver of light, either from other wells they passed or from small imperfections in the ground above them, little cracks in the earth that allowed light to stream downward.   

Aragorn stumbled frequently and his breath was labored and harsh.  His mind was free of Simiasha’s power, but he was still newly tainted with the Huntress’ blood.  Eowyn wondered that he was even on his feet.  He kept pace with her as best he could and she kept a firm grip on his hand in case he fell.  Somehow, she knew he would not.  Not because he possessed great, super-human strength, but because he simply could not fall.  Too much---his wife, his son, his kingdom, the entire West---depended upon him.  He was the bearing wall that held everything he loved upright and he could not fall.

“Wait!” She whispered finally, bringing them to a halt at the mouth of a large cavern room.  Behind her, Aragorn was straining to see in the unrelenting darkness.  Not so much as a spark of light flickered about them.

But directly ahead, less than fifty yards, she could sense the brilliant flames of the five score Elven warriors and Thranduil himself.

“Lass?”  A gruff voice called.

“Gimli!”  She cried.  “It is me!  Aragorn is with me.  Is---is Legolas with you?”

“He is,” Gimli said, stepping from behind a cleft in the wall.  He grinned widely.  “I knew you would find us!  Did I not says so, Legolas?”

Legolas materialized out of a solid bank of shadow right beside them.  “I recall it was I who said she would find us quickly, my friend,” he said, raising one brow arrogantly.  If gave him the look of his father, in manner if not feature.  He smiled at her warmly.  “I am glad you are here, meleth-nin.”

Eowyn threw caution and all restraint to the four winds.  She fell into his embrace, joy and relief washing over her.  “I thought they might have taken you as well,” she sighed.  “I am glad to see you safe!”  She kissed him, heedless that Aragorn, Gimli, and very probably Thranduil and all his warriors were looking on.

She opened her eyes, slowly withdrawing her mouth from his, her heart shriveling to a cold husk in her chest.  All hope fled as he smiled at her, cold and mocking.  “Your kiss tastes of Estel, my faithless love,” he said softly, still holding her close.

“And yours tastes of blood,” Eowyn whispered, tears filling her eyes.  She heard Aragorn’s low sigh of pain as Gimli swung his axe, striking the king with the handle.  “Your father and your people---“

“Oh, they are here, just around the bend up ahead,” Legolas told her, one hand resting lightly on the back of her neck.  “They are all unconscious.”

Simiasha would not waste so much precious Elvish blood.  She would gorge herself on Thranduil and his folk when she woke.  Fool!  Fool!  Her mind shrieked.  She had led Aragorn right into their hands like a lamb to the slaughter.  She raised her right arm, setting her hand upon the pommel of the bright thing Ikako had forged for her.  In the same instant, Legolas struck her across the temple with the butt of his long knife.

I have failed, she thought in despair as the she fell.  I have failed everyone!

She woke in Legolas’ arms, wondering for a moment if it all might have been a terrible nightmare.  He body was still warm against hers.  His hand upon her cheek, his lips upon her brow were gentle. 

“She wakes,” a harsh male voice said thickly.  It took her a moment to realize it was Eomer speaking.

“What of it?”  Legolas asked with cool indifference.  “Keep your distance, Horserider.  I will butcher you, your Men, and all the Mistress’ host of the Dead if you touch her.”

Eomer snorted with derisive laughter.  “You are resisting the Mistress’ will, Elf.  I will enjoy watching her break you once more when she returns!” 

The sound of many feet moving away.  Legolas’ chest rose and fell against her, a sigh of tense relief.  He was sitting cross-legged upon the cobbles of the Fountain Square.  She was bound hands and feet with thick chains, lying in his lap like a sleeping child, her head upon his breast.  Fire flickered in her peripheral vision, the flames of scores of torches.  The babble of hundreds of voices, low and excited, like spectators awaiting a coronation, came from all around.  It seemed they were sitting on the edge of a great crowd.

It was full night.

“Help me,” she implored softly.

“I cannot,” he said, a world of sorrow in his voice.  “Her mind is within mine.  I am lost, beloved.  I---I kept the others from---from hurting you, for the Mistress commanded that they do so.  She is not pressing upon me so heavily now, but she is otherwise occupied.  She rose an hour ago, and gave her Hunters leave to slay all the wounded still left in the City.”

Eowyn felt a scream of rage and grief rise in her throat.

“Oh, Eowyn!”  Legolas said.  “She has taken Estel!  There is only this much left of what is truly me because she is bending the full force of her will toward breaking his mind!”  He sobbed softly.  “I will protect you as long as I may.  Until she returns.  It is the best I can do.  I am sorry, Eowyn!  I am sorry!”

She raised her bound hands, touching his face, smoothing away the tears there.  “When did you drink the water?  I thought Elves could sense the foulness of the tainted blood.”

“I did not drink,” he said.  “I think---I think when Aragorn purged our blood he also purged your protection.  And after losing ourselves to the madness in battle last night, she was able to push her way back into my mind.  Poor Gimli never had your blood to protect him, so he fell to her will first.  Then she took me.”  His voice dropped to a dull whisper.  “It hurt so terribly, Eowyn.  It was worse than the first time for I knew what was happening and could not stop it.  She commanded Gimli and I to see to it that everyone in Rhunballa drank from the tainted wells, and then to gather up all the Shards on false pretense.  We did this very cleverly over the course of the day.  I avoided you, Estel and my father because I knew one of you would see something amiss in me.”

“Drink again!” She whispered urgently.  “If you---“

“I cannot,” he said softly.  “She commanded explicitly against it, and even now I cannot disobey.  Please!  Please do not try to break your bonds!  If you do, she commanded that I hurt you.”

Eowyn shivered as she felt the prick of the tip of his long knife.  He was holding it pressed against her belly.  If she moved to escape, his hand would slice her guts open of its own volition.

“What can you do?” A voice asked quietly.

Eowyn twisted her head a bit trying to see.   Thranduil was ten, perhaps fifteen feet away.  He was chained with his hands behind him, shackled against a fence post in a sitting position.  One of Simiasha’s Undead must have driven the post into the stones of the Square.  Here and there, all around the Square, the rest of Thranduil’s folk were bound in the same fashion.  No doubt the Huntress meant to glut herself upon them when she returned.  Legolas stared at his father, his face blank and unreadable.

“You have said what you cannot do,” Thranduil said slowly, his eyes boring into his son’s.  “Test what you can do.  Probe the edges of the geas the demon set upon you and help your bride!”

“Where are my weapons?” Eowyn asked desperately.  Oh, Eru, if they were thrown down some dark, fathomless hole in the earth, all hope was lost.

“I---“ Legolas said painfully.  “They---they are---“ He seemed to be trying to force his words past some locked door in his mind.

“The beast specifically commanded that you prevent Eowyn’s escape,” Thranduil said intently.  “That you wound her if she tries to flee.  Did Thuringwethil say, ‘Do not tell your love where you have lain her weapons’?”

Legolas quivered against her, his breath labored.

“Please, Legolas,” she said softly.  Oh Elbereth, they were nearly out of time!  She could feel it in her bones and blood!  “Fight her!”

“You are stronger that this, my son,” Thranduil said.  “All those you love most in Middle Earth will soon be dead or worse than dead if you do not help her!  Think what the Huntress will do to Gimli, to Aragorn, to your Eowyn, if she wins!”

“I tossed them over there,” Legolas gasped, nodding at the pile of glinting metal and leathers strewn over her torn, muddy cloak just to one side of where they sat.

Oh Merciful Elbereth!  Oh, Lady of Light, thank you!  Eowyn’s heart sang.

“Bring them to me,” Eowyn said steadily, holding his eyes with her own.  His face was a mask of agony, his entire form was shaking with internal struggle, like a young tree caught in a violent tempest.  “Bring them to me and set them in my hands.  If I try to escape, you must stop me, but she said nothing about---“

“Legolas!”  A harsh, deep voice said sharply. 

Gimli son of Gloin stalked over to Legolas, his face a mixture of anger and fear.  “The Mistress will dismember you alive if you even entertain such defiance, you idiot Elf!  Do not listen to her.  Or better yet, clout her unconscious again to keep her clouding your mind.  Do not let her wile you into thinking with your---“

“Foul-mouthed, baseborn, mud-grubbing naugrim!”  A rich, beautiful voice sang out.  Thranduil curled his lips into an arrogant, derisive sneer.  “I knew you would one day betray my son!  I should have clapped you in irons the instant you first set foot in my realm.  Just as I did your shiftless, cowardly father and his thieving, treacherous companions!”

Gimli rounded on the Elvenking, his face an ugly, distorted mask of rage.  For a half instant, Eowyn met the eyes of Legolas’ father and saw the cold calculation behind the jibes.  He was drawing Gimli away, giving her another few precious moments to sway Legolas.  Gimli barreled forward, with every intention of dealing Thranduil a ringing blow to the jaw.  The King of Mirkwood grinned nastily, waiting until the Dwarf was close.  Then his foot shot up and out and Thranduil kicked Gimli in the straddle with vicious precision.  The Elvenking’s sweet, musical laughter echoed across the Square as Gimli uttered a roar of pain, doubling over.  People began drifting over, their familiar faces twisted with eager glee at the prospect of some cruel sport.  The faces of Eomer, of Fallah and Suni and dozens of others seemed bloody in the red flare of the torchlight.

“I would have thought a Dwarf, of all people, would guard his family jewels with better care!” Eomer laughed.

“You will suffer for that, Elf!”  Gimli muttered thickly.

A crowd, horribly reminiscent of the ring of Hunters who that tormented Gimli to his suicidal leap from the Crags, pressed in around the stock where Thranduil was chained, blocking Eowyn’s view of Gimli and Legolas’ father.  And now, Eowyn saw that some of the throng were indeed Hunters, mixing freely with the living.  And why not?  They were all Simiasha’s children now.

“Do you trust me, Legolas?” She asked softly.

“Yes,” he breathed.

“Trust in me when I tell you I can defeat her,” Eowyn said.  She gazed up into his beautiful face, so full of terrible pain. “Do it now.  Please, Legolas!  Your father cannot hold their attention for long.  Please!”

“What---?”  His face was pale with effort.  “What do you need?”

“Just pull the cloak over to me,” Eowyn said, her voice trembling.  “And do not touch anything inside it directly.”

Slowly, carefully, he hefted her bound body a little more securely in his lap and began surreptitiously inching to one side, toward the pile of her gear.  He need not have bothered with stealth.  No one was paying them any attention at all.  There rose another mocking cheer as Gimli shouted with anger and pain once more.  Slowly, his eyes streaming with tears of strain, Legolas dragged the cloak and all that was heaped upon it into arm’s reach.

He set her gently on her knees in front of him, all her weapons and armor now strewn between them.

He leaned forward and touched his lips to hers, a quick, desperate gesture of all the wealth of his love.  “My father was wrong to even suggest that our love is a thing born of our shared blood!”  He said fiercely.  “I knew I loved you when you first kissed me in the Nest.  Before I ever supped Simiasha’s blood or yours.  If we die tonight, die knowing my love for you was real and true and born of every good and brave and beautiful thing about you!”

She sobbed, unable to say anything at all to that.  So, she simply kissed him.

He lay his hands on her face and edged back a bit.  “I know you can break your bonds easily.  Strike hard and quickly, Eowyn, for the instant you break free I must attack---“ He went rigid, his face blanched with pain, his eyes glazing over.  “Eowyn, quickly!  She comes!”

Eowyn broke her chains and swung in one fluid motion, striking his temple with the broken end of the metal link.  He dodged backward, faster than thought, and gods help her, in half a second she knew he was better, stronger and faster than her.  She lurched forward, grasping at the bright thing in the pile of weapons and armor, a hopeless leap for salvation.  He back-handed her and she spun, falling upon her face.  She felt his knee drive hard in the small of her back, felt him wrench her arms behind her back with cruel force. 

“The Mistress is coming! You will not spoil this night for her!”  He hissed in her ear, his breath hot against the back of her neck.  He wrenched her arms up brutally behind her, so high she thought she could hear the bone and sinew in the elbows and shoulder sockets groan aloud, and in this fashion dragged her to her knees.  He knelt behind her, his knees on either side of her, and pulled her back against him, one hand still cuffing her wrists high behind her back, the other around her waist, holding her fast.

Everywhere, she could hear the din of hysterical joy rising up into the hot night air, human voices crying out along side the breathless shrieks of the undead, a descant hymn of black ecstasy.

Simiasha rose, her wings like the black fabric of unending night between the stars, fluttering upward from the sinkhole where the Fountain had once stood.  She was healed, perfect and whole after feeding upon the blood of Thranduil’s missing warriors. Behind her, Eowyn felt Legolas heave a sigh of adoration as he gazed up at the Queen of the Dead.

 Aragorn hung in her grasp, suspended by the scruff of his neck. 

Simiasha settled to earth amidst her flock of adoring offspring, oblivious to the cries of worship.  She beautiful face was thunderous with fury.  And as she hurled Aragorn to the ground with a snarl of rage, Eowyn suddenly saw why.  He was pale as a corpse, drained half to death.  But his eyes were still clear and bright.  His mind was still his own, unbowed, unbroken in the wake of the Huntress’ mental assault.  How long had Legolas lasted when Simiasha bent her mind toward smashing his will?  Surely it had been less than ten minutes.  And Aragorn was still free, still unmarred by the pollution of her mind within his after a barrage that must have lasted hours.

“Be silent!”  Simiasha hissed softly.

A dead hush fell over the crowd.

Not far away, Eowyn saw Eomer and Gimli, their faces alight with love as they gazed at the creature that had enslaved them.  Thranduil hung in his chains, his face bruised and bleeding, all but forgotten.  Everywhere Eowyn looked she saw the faces of those she knew, standing or kneeling, rapt as the Elves in Valinor kneeling before the Throne of Manwe.  Legolas murmured the Huntress’ name in her ear, a sigh that held love and dread mingled.

Simiasha was glowering down at Aragorn balefully.  The King of Gondor rose to his knees, his eyes locked with hers, his pale face cold and full of disgust.  Slowly, he began to climb weakly to his feet.

Simiasha lashed out with one dainty fist and clubbed him to his knees once more.  Aragorn wavered unsteadily, shaking his ringing head painfully.  Then he spat blood and tried to rise again.  The barbed tip of the Huntress’ ebon wing curled inward and down and its blunt side struck him across the thigh.  Eowyn cringed at the sickening crack, the sound of Aragorn’s leg breaking.  He cried out and went down, listing drunkenly as he tried to hold onto consciousness.

Eowyn shifted, tensing to hurl herself forward, and she felt the sharp prick of his long knife in her side.  “Do not spoil my beloved Lady’s game,” he said softly.  “It will be your turn all too soon!”

“She is not your beloved!”  Eowyn said through gritted teeth.

“Every time I touched you it was her face I saw!”  Legolas sighed against her neck, laughing softly as she sobbed and twisted in his arms.  “Every time my pleasure peaked it was her name my heart cried out!”

“That is a lie!”  Eowyn cried.  “It is her filthy lie!”

Aragorn fell to the ground as Simiasha slashed at him again with her wingtip.  The crowd cheered their worshipful approval.

“Stupid mortal animal,” the Huntress snickered softly. 

“You may break every bone in my body one at a time if it please you,”  Aragorn rasped.  “But it will not help you overthrow my mind!”

Simiasha shot forward in a blur of motion and hauled Aragorn up by the neck.  She bored into him with her mountainous gaze, her face livid.  “Tell me,” she asked, stroking his face gently, her voice kind.  “How can a filthy frail mortal such as yourself resist my might?”

“I might tell you if you somehow manage to break me,” Aragorn said painfully.  “So, I suppose you shall never know.”

Simiasha’s eyes widened, her teeth distending, her face losing its careful glamour of human beauty as she forgot to project the illusion in her anger.  She was snarling into Aragorn’s face, one hand aloft, a heartbeat from delivering an angry blow that would have torn her captive’s head from his shoulders. Then suddenly, she froze.  She laughed, high and sweet, shaking her head with grudging admiration.

“You almost goaded me into killing you, my clever darling,” she chuckled.  “But there are other methods that will bend your knees.  You will open your mind to me, King of Gondor, or I will bring forth every child in this land and butcher them before your eyes.”  Her eyes cut toward Eowyn slyly.  The Huntress smiled sweetly, seeing her held helpless in Legolas’ arms.  “But first…shall we see what sport we can devise to make the Captain of Rhunballa’s Watch scream for mercy?”

Eowyn felt Legolas’ body tremble against hers, a bare hint of a shiver.  Even crushed beneath the weight of Simiasha’s full power, he was not completely hers.

“Oh, I think I have solved this little puzzle,” the Huntress said, smiling sweet venom at Eowyn.  “You gave Elessar your blood, did you not? You ruined my Morsul and pilfered sweet Legolas from my very bosom.  And now you would also have this fine, strong stallion for you own? Greedy wench!”

“Your imagination is as foul and diseased as your blood!”  Eowyn shouted, and all the throng of thousands shouted their rage at her blasphemy.

“It occurs to me,” Simiasha said thoughtfully, “that if the fountain of Elessar’s resistance is your blood, then I have but to kill you and he will be defenseless against me.  How sad!  I had so hoped to leave you warm and breathing for a while so that you might better savor the sensation of all the ways I mean to torture you!”  She unsheathed her claws.

“Her death will avail you not at all, Queen of Blood!”  A clear voice

called.

Simiasha smiled with malicious delight at the sight of Thranduil hanging bound in his chains.  “Why is that, lovely one? Have you a secret you care to impart?  Or are you simply trying to distract me?”

Thranduil’s face was taught with arrogant rage.  He spat in disgust.  “You will not break the King of Gondor!  He is of the line of Luthien, who was daughter to Melian of the Maiar.  Luthien, who defeated Sauron in songs of power.  Luthien, who charmed Morgoth himself to steal a Silmaril and left him facedown on the floor of Hell in a puddle of his own drool!  Luthien, Thuringwethil, who by her arts of song skinned you like a fat fall rabbit and wore your mantle as a disguise to penetrate Angband!  Now and then, the mortal branch of that line breeds true, hearkening all the way back to Luthien and Melian before her.  Aragorn’s body is mortal and he will not live the many centuries it would take to realize his full potential.  He knows nothing of wizard craft or the arts of the Wise, save healing.  But the full measure of his fore-mother’s power burns within his mind.  My son has told me Aragorn bested Sauron in a battle of wills as they vied for control of the Palantir of Orthanc.  How do you hope to crush Elessar’s will when you yourself could not have done this?”

“You lie!”  Simiasha spat, stalking over to where the Elvenking hung, leaving Aragorn and Eowyn forgotten for the moment.  “I was Sauron’s equal and more!”

“Say you so?” Thranduil asked with a mocking sneer.  “It is said among the Elves that after Morgoth tired of your charms you fled to Tol-in-Gaurhoth in a huff and served Sauron as errand runner---though you may have been his scullery wench and doxy as well for all I know!”  He threw back his golden head and laughed like a silver bell as Simiasha shrieked with inarticulate rage.  “You were no match for Luthien.  You were no match for Sauron.  And you are no match for the King of Gondor.”  As he spoke, each word dripping with contempt, the Huntress continued to advance upon him, each step taking her another precious foot away from Aragorn and Eowyn, each taunt drawing ever more of her attention to Thranduil.  “What will you do, Thuringwethil, when he is fully changed and you wake to the realization that instead of a consort, you have set up a King of the Undead to rule over you?”

“There are many ways to break a living thing, Oropherion,” Simiasha said with a sly bow of her lips.  “And it will be my great pleasure to show you all of them.  And as for Elessar, if I cannot crack his mind by brute force, I will kill everything and everyone he loves while he watches.  I will ride him until he breaks to the bit, be assured!”

“She is going to kill your father, Legolas!”  Eowyn hissed desperately.  “He will goad her until she kills him out of hand!”  Legolas tensed behind her but the knife against her kidney did not waver.

Simiasha was directly before Thranduil now.  Slowly, she knelt before him and drew one hooked nail down the Elvenking’s cheek.  Thranduil met her eyes with cold antipathy, but as their gazes clashed, as long seconds drew out, his face began to darken with blood as though his heart were pounding, straining behind his breastbone.  And very slowly, Thranduil’s eyes grew wide with terrible fear.  He swallowed, as though he were choking back a cry.  He pressed his head against the ungiving wood if the post he was shackled to as though trying to shrink away from the gentle caress the Huntress was drawing up and down his face.

“Stop it!” Thranduil whispered, his face flushed, his voice shaking.

“Not all of my tortures involve pain,” Simiasha said softly.  “There is nothing that arouses my ardor so much as proud defiance. And as you see, I can make your body burn for me with nothing more than a touch.”

Thranduil bit back a sob.  His hands twisted against the chains, but the rest of his body was so rigid with strain he seemed frozen.  Simiasha laughed lightly and leaned forward, her lips half parted.  Thranduil uttered a growl that was a tortured mix of agony and desire.  He leaned forward, pulling his chains taught, and kissed her hard upon the mouth.

“Adar…” Legolas whispered in Eowyn’s ear, a soft note of horror.

The Huntress drew back, looking well pleased.  “You are delicious, Oropherion.”

Legolas’ father sagged, shaking off the spell the instant the Huntress ceased touching him, and Eowyn saw that his face was streaked with tears. Slowly he raised his head, straightened his back and thrust his chin out defiantly.  Then he spat in the monster’s face with a hoarse sob of horror and disgust.  Simiasha gaped at him in frozen rage.

“I,” Thranduil said succinctly, “would sooner bed down with Sauron himself, you rotting, shriveled, boney-arsed, uncomely harlot!”

“Strike now, Eowyn!”  Legolas gasped painfully, lowering his knife’s point from her back.

And three things happened then, in the space of a single heartbeat.  Simiasha raised her hand with a howl of maddened anger, preparing to slice the Elvenking’s throat open to the bone.  Eowyn wrenched free of Legolas’ slackened grip and brought her elbow around.  She slammed it against the Elf’s temple with all her might and drove her fist into his sternum a half second later.  Legolas coughed, bending forward as the wind was forced from his lungs.  And Aragorn hurled a stone with deadly precision at the back of Simiasha’s head.

Eowyn sprang forward, diving for the cloak where her weapons lay swaddled.  Her hand locked about the thing she sought and she rolled back to her feet, dashing forward.

She stopped, placing herself directly between Simiasha and Aragorn.

Behind her, she felt Legolas climbing painfully to his feet, saw Eomer, Suni and Moussah flanking her on either side, knew Gimli had moved in behind her.  Around them, the Hunters edged forward in a wide ring, cutting off any possible escape.  As she beheld Eowyn, standing alone against her, the Huntress let loose a bray of hideous laughter. 

“Stay your hands, my pets,” she told her slaves, living and dead.  “So…does the brave heroine think she can vanquish a daughter of the Ainur unaided?”

Legolas continued moving, circling around Eowyn to stand on Simiasha’s right hand.  Oh Elbereth, she will use him as a shield!

“You are no longer of the Ainur!” Eowyn said.  “You are nothing more than a monster!  And I am going to kill you.”

“Are you now?” Simiasha strode forward with slow, amused arrogance, and Legolas kept pace with her.  His face was completely blank, but his hands were clenched and shaking.  The Huntress smiled like a girl with a secret love.  Her teeth were clotted with gore.  Perhaps it was an aspect of the Change working upon Eowyn, but this close, the mirage of the smiling beautiful woman seemed like a transparent, threadbare veil, only marginally obscuring the horror that lay behind.  Simiasha moved to stand behind Legolas, threading her long nails through his bright hair so that he shivered visibly.  “Still resisting, my love?” She murmured into his ear.  Then she shifted her gaze back to Eowyn and her lips bowed prettily, covering the bloody, wolf-like fangs.  “I have thought long, Eowyn of Rohan, upon what manner of torment I might devise for you.” She shook her head regretfully.  “I have so many delightful games in mind, and few of them will be as amusing once you are dead.”

Eowyn stood tensely in an agony of indecision.  She should attack, she should not hesitate.  But she could not, would not, while the monster stood so close to Legolas. 

Simiasha watched her eyes, saw her tense each time Legolas flinched under the Huntress’ touch.  Her smiled widened, baring her long, deadly canines, and she gently pushed Legolas aside.  “But it seems I must now be merciful

and slay you if I would have Elessar or the Prince of Mirkwood as my servants.”

“Come,” Eowyn said coldly.  “Come and slay me yourself if you are not too weak and cowardly to do your own butchery!”

With a deep, guttural chuckle, the Queen of the Hunters leapt forward, clawed hands extended to tear Eowyn’s flesh to bloody shreds.  Eowyn stood firm and watched her come, talons bared, wings lashing.  To Eowyn’s skewed perception, the Huntress seemed like nothing so much as a drowned bat, flailing toward her through deep waters.  Simiasha bore down upon her without care, unguarded, without a shred of fear.  Eowyn waited until the Huntress was upon almost upon her. 

And then she drew her sword, unsheathing its bright blade from it’s the dull, black scabbard Ikako had died to complete, the veiling shroud wrought from the Daegond stone Moussah had given her.

Legolas and Gimli had gathered the Shards or Elwing’s Orb and disposed of them all. All except for the three Ikako had taken from Eowyn’s bedside table and ground into the steel from which she forged her masterpiece.

Shard, Eowyn had named it.  Though, perhaps the sword had named itself.  It seemed the shining blade had spoken to Eowyn’s heart as she first took it in her hand, singing its own name in the whispering ring of steel as she tested its weight and balance.  Cloistered in the obsidian sheath of the Daegond’s iron, its power had remained invisible.  The Daegond had been the final piece of the weapon, the shield that let Eowyn bring Shard close to Simiasha, so there would be no escape for the Huntress.

The light flared in a crystalline halo, unleashed from the Daegond’s fetter, ten times more brilliant for having been confined in the presence of evil.  Everywhere the sound of screams erupted, thousands strong, as tainted humans and Hunters alike were washed in the purifying light.

Simiasha’s eyes widened in horror as her forward momentum drove her into the heart of the holy light.  Eowyn stepped forward to meet her as she came. She drove the blade of solid light deep into Simiasha’s belly and cut upward in a slicing stroke.  Shard tore through sinew and bone, unseaming the Huntress from belly to breastbone like a threadbare garment.  One mighty arm swung round and swatted Eowyn back through the air.  Eowyn hit the ground and rolled back to her feet, head spinning from the blow. Shard was still in her hand.

Simiasha reared back her head and howled. The Huntress’ claws had grown larger, her arms and legs shifted into something thick, sinewy and elongated, almost reptilian.  Her back sprouted a row of gray, sharply spiked ridges. Her jaw distended like a shark’s maw, and her nose and cheeks pushed forward, framing themselves into a vulpine muzzle.  Her shimmering garments fell away to ash and her ivory skin melted into a gray-green, mottled color, pocked and ugly as the soul it encased.

All the while she burned, as her façade was seared away in Shard’s light.  She wailed in pain and surprise, staggering, staring down at the jagged, smoking tear in her midsection.  She might have still had the power to fly away, she might have escaped at that moment. But foremost, always and ever, it was hate and spite that ruled every other emotion and impulse.  Simiasha leapt at her enemy and lashed downward in spitting fury, burning like an oil-soaked tree but heedless of her own peril. 

Eowyn leapt back, barely in time to avoid being hewn in half by the massive, flaming claw.  They circled, each stalking the other, each taking the other’s measure as best she could. And as Simiasha blurred toward her once more, as Eowyn leapt nimbly aside and slashed the edge of one black wing open, Eowyn’s heart leapt. Theoden’s voice rang in her mind.  More oft than not, her Uncle had said, it is not the stronger warrior, but the more skilled warrior who wins the day.  Simiasha was stronger and faster, but like most bullies, great and small, she had always relied greater strength without honing her skill.

Around their tense, vicious duel, the Square had dissolved into hellish chaos. The Hunters were all ablaze, shrieking as Shard’s silver sheen burned them to ash.  Every living soul infected by the Huntress’ contagion wailed as well, falling to writhe upon the ground.  Through the blood, they felt their Mistress’ pain and burned with her, if only in their minds.  But the Huntress’ pain and distraction, her weakening wounds and the holy fire that was slowly reducing her body to a charred, animate cinder, had another, less universal effect on those she had enslaved.  Some of the stronger minds had broken free of her thrall.  In the corner of her eye, Eowyn saw her brother had crawled toward the stock posts where Thranduil and the other Elves hung chained. He was weakly hacking at the Elf King’s shackles with his sword.

Eowyn forced her mind away from that, focusing solely on her enemy, looking for an opening, a space to attack through the blur of flaming claws. She dodged in and out once more, missing the tearing sweep of one great wings by an inch.  Simiasha spat bloody gore and hissed at her like a serpent.  Her outer shell had burned completely away, revealing the flat horror that lay beneath.  Simiasha was wounded and in horrible pain, but her furious, slitted eyes held cold calculated murder.

Eowyn never saw the stones that flew from the crowd, never saw the hapless living souls that Simiasha still held in her power as they hurled a score of rocks at her back upon the Huntress’ command.  Eowyn stumbled as she was struck in a dozen places at once.  She had the single dazed thought that she had been a fool the assume her enemy would play fair, even in a duel Simiasha still believed she could win.  Then the Huntress’ wingtip whipped down, driving its spiked talon into the earth as Eowyn barely managed to side step in time.  Before she could move again, Simiasha twisted and the other wing descended.  It struck home, slicing Eowyn’s left shoulder open to the bone.  She staggered, reeling with the shock of the wound, but she did not fall.  She did not drop her sword.

Simiasha’s mouth drew wide in a long-toothed smile.  She stepped lightly around Eowyn and bent to pick up the black Daegond sheath.  As she lifted it, the flames that were burning her body without engulfing it, guttered out and were gone. The Huntress’ mouth opened in soft wonder, her yellow eyes full of worshipful love. 

“This has been touched by Him, my dearest, darkest love and my God!”  She kissed it as a young bride would kiss her wedding band.  She cut her eyes back to Eowyn and sneered.  “It constrained the power of the Shards in your little sword, but it has also weakened their radiance temporarily.  It is what allowed you to sneak your weapon into my presence, but it is also the reason they are too weak still to do more than give me this nasty sunburn.  The treasures of the Dark One always find a way to aid His servants!”  She hefted the scabbard in her right claw and advanced upon Eowyn.   “Your sword will not regain its power quickly enough to save you, girl.” A deep-throated, rasping chuckle.  “Every soul in the accursed vale is mine!  All shall change and fall beneath my wings!”

Eowyn leapt backward just in time, her breath short in her throat as more of her own blood soaked her breast each time she moved.  Her hair stirred in the dank, humid breeze as the Huntress’ wings lashed past her face.

The ragged tear in her shoulder was draining her strength away like a sieve.

Simiasha loomed before her, tittering merrily.  Her wingspan was nearly forty feet from wingtip to wingtip.  Eowyn would have to make her way through those deadly wings to deliver a death stroke.  She realized with cold, pragmatic clarity that such an attack would most likely cost her life. 

Let it be so, she thought.  She must end this while she still had the strength to stand.

She dodged forward, through the Huntress’ wings, slicing at the outstretched claw that rose to greet her.  She whirled Shard about as Simiasha snarled in pain and raised the sword to drive it into her enemy’s breast.  Simiasha swung the Daegond sheath around and slammed it against Eowyn’s shoulder wound.

Eowyn screamed, falling backward.  She had just enough strength to hold onto Shard and none left to support her own legs.  She fell on her back.  A leathery, scorched foot pressed down upon her chest, pinning her to the earth.

“This is not the end, my dear,” Simiasha gloated.  “You are too far gone in the Change to simply die.  When I tear your heart from your breast, you will rise again.  Die, mortal woman, knowing that your torment in my service is only just beginning!”

A bowstring sang and Simiasha cawed like a wounded raven, stumbling back, clawing at the shaft embedded in her left eye.  As Eowyn tried to sit, tried with all her might to rise, she saw a battered Aragorn sitting beside Moussah.  Somehow, between the two of them, they had managed to draw the crossbow and fire, despite the mental barrage the Huntress was projecting in all directions. 

“One eye left, O Westron Dog!” Moussah laughed weakly.

Aragorn was trying to lay a second bolt in the crossbow’s cradle with shaking hands.  “Aye!  Let us see if we can blind her!”

Eowyn managed to crawl to her knees and saw Fallah across the Square kneeling beside Eomer and Thranduil, picking at the Elf King’s chains with a hair pin.

Simiasha tore the bolt from her eye with a rasping grunt and whirled, rounding on Aragorn and the young Emperor and bowling them over with a sweep of one mighty wing.  Eowyn tried to stand and fell on her face, the world tilting on its side.  She imagined she could hear the earth shuddering under the Huntress’ feet as she advanced upon Eowyn, ready to deal her the deathblow she had promised.

And then Gimli and Legolas rose, their long knives and axe twin blurs of speed.  Gimli cried out in his own tongue, a bass battle cry.  He clove downward, shaving the Huntress’ right wing from her body in a single powerful chop.  In the same instant, Legolas sliced the other wing with viscous surgical precision, his eyes bright and fierce, free of Simiasha’s power once more.  The monster swung drunkenly, catching Gimli a solid blow.  The Dwarf went flying over Eowyn’s head and she struggled back to her knees.

“Fire at will!”  Thranduil shouted stridently in Sindarin.  Eomer and Fallah had managed to free the King of Mirkwood and four of his warriors.  His ringing voice sang out in chorus with Suni’s as she ordered her archers to let fly their arrows.  But the arrows never met their mark.

Simiasha tossed back her head and roared.

It was not a sound born of vocal chords or anything as insubstantial as flesh.  It was a mental shout, a standing wave of power hurled outward in every direction.  What she had done moments ago in pain, she did now with cold purpose.  It felled every thinking being in its path, driving the Elves to their knees with simple raw force and bombarding the infected mortals through the conduit of her blood bond. Though the light of Shard and Simiasha’s weakened state had freed the minds of a few of the living mortals in her thrall, it did not shield them from this assault.  All around the Square, all throughout the City, every living thing shackled in blood to Simiasha fell to the ground and shrieked in agony.

Eowyn stood, rising to her feet unsteadily, alone before the creature the Haradrim called the Queen of Blood and Darkness.  Eowyn could feel her wounds closing, healing themselves. She knew Morsul’s blood still flowed in her veins.  She knew Gandalf’s spell would guard her mind from Simiasha’s influence while she still drew breath.  But strangely, the weight of the Huntress’ will, which had pressed down on her like a falling mountain in the Nest, was only a painful buzzing inside her head.  Had the Change drew Eowyn completely into its icy embrace, Simiasha would have lost all power to harm her in any way. I will have one queen in this little hive, the Huntress had said, And I will not suffer pretenders.  Had Simiasha understood even then that the Change in Eowyn might create a free-willed, undead rival rather than a slave?

Eowyn smiled grimly, gripping Shard in her bloody hands.  She strode forward.  Simiasha’s lips pulled apart in a snarl and she bent and hefted something off the ground, holding it before her like a shield.   Too late, Eowyn saw that it was Legolas’ half-conscious body.  He had fallen almost at Simiasha’s feet when she hurled her power at those around her.

Eowyn stopped, her heart in her mouth, her eyes on Legolas’ pale face as the Huntress lifted him up, her hand around the back of  his neck so that he was facing Eowyn.  He shook his head minutely, silently begging her not to stay her hand for his sake.  But Eowyn could not move for fear.  She stood frozen, helpless, forgetting her danger and all the lives that hung in the balance.

“I shall punish you for long centuries, woman of Rohan,” Simiasha said softly.  “But at the moment, I think I know what will hurt you most.”

Legolas gasped, his eyes widening in pain and surprise as the Huntress drove one clawed arm forward like a spear, through the Elf’s back and out his chest.  For an eternity that was surely only a few seconds, he hung impaled on the monstrous claw, suspended between life and death, his rent heart pouring his life away upon the uncaring ground.  His eyes never left Eowyn’s.  There were tears of pain and shock in their sea gray depths, but also of sorrow immeasurable for a parting that would be everlasting, until the end of Time.

Eowyn watched, mute and paralyzed as Simiasha smiled and lashed her arm, flinging Legolas off her claw with casual brutality.  He fell on his face at Eowyn’s feet and lay still, unmoving, a widening pool of red spreading out beneath his body. 

“You look so stricken, my girl!” Simiasha snickered, her words cutting into the numb cold that was encasing Eowyn like a prison of ice. 

Eowyn knelt, heedless of Simiasha’s gloating danger.  The Huntress would not attack, Eowyn thought distantly.  She would want to revel in Eowyn’s pain.  Gently, she rolled Legolas onto his back, and a soft little sigh escaped her lips as she saw again the finality of the wound her enemy had dealt him.  His eyes were closed, but breath still rattled wetly in his ruined breast, growing fainter by the second.  She touched his face, numb within, cold and seemingly unmoved without.  She was frozen once more.  And never shall I thaw again, her mind whispered.  How could she walk again in the Sun when he who had rekindled light and warmth in her body and heart lay cold and lifeless?  Oh, she would flee the bonds of flesh and the living world this moment and fly to his side if she could!  But it would avail her naught.  He was leaving, going where she could not follow, to the destiny prepared for the Firstborn.  And there in Mandos or Elvenhome he would dwell beyond her ken, beyond her reach.  Forever and ever and ever.

“Do not fear, child!” Simiasha said with bright malice.  “He is bound by my blood to his flesh and cannot seek Mandos.  He will rise again within the hour and you and he may have a sweet reunion.”  She tittered.  “Though you may find her embrace a tad cold.”

Eowyn blinked.  Her head whipped up, her blue eyes meeting the Huntress’ yellow, slitted orbs.  She was still frozen in a world of cold, comfortless grief, but she was no longer immobile.  She bent and kissed Legolas’ bloody lips.  Then she stood, Shard in hand, the unfeeling, dreamlike daze she had been submerged within fled and was gone.  She stood before her enemy, eyeing the Huntress with chill, implacable purpose.  Simiasha would not have Legolas’ soul, Eowyn thought icily.  Nor Aragorn’s, nor Eomer’s, nor that of any other in this land.

Eowyn planted her feet, washed in a terrible sense of familiarity.  For the second time in her life she stood alone, barring the horror before her from the fallen loved one behind her.  The loved one she had again been to slow to save.  They called her fearless, a slayer of demons that crushed the courage of lesser warriors.  Fools!  It took no courage at all to fly into the maw of Hell when that which you loved most in the world lay in a bleeding wreck on the field.  It needed no brave heart to rush upon the barbed talons of nightmares when the souls of her beloved, of everyone she knew, lay in mortal danger.  Stupid beast, Eowyn thought unfeelingly, to have pushed her once more to that cold, silent place where nothing mattered but the death of her foe.

Eowyn sped forward in a white arch of speed, heedless of the Huntress’ readied claws.  Shard flared again, bright and beautiful, as she drew nearer her prey, filling the world with its holy, silver light, blotting out all other things.  Simiasha slashed wildly, blind in the halo of Shard’s radiance, and Eowyn dodged through her claws effortlessly.  She swung, a clean, even stroke, feeling her blade slide through flesh and bone as easily as if her target had been a dry strawman.  Simiasha’s head flew from her body and bounced unceremoniously, rolling on the cobbles like a child’s ball.

Eowyn watched the decapitated body flounder and fall.  She limped toward the Huntress’ head and stood staring down into the misshapen face dispassionately.  All in all, Eowyn decided, she much preferred Simiasha’s bat form.  It showed her as she truly was.  Simiasha’s eyes were wide and still aware, her lips bitten through in her rage like a rabid thing.  She was still trying to speak.  She had spewed bile and hatefulness to her last breath and beyond.  Eowyn raised Shard and, without a word, clove the head of Simiasha, the Huntress, the Queen of Blood and Darkness, Thuringwethil of old, asunder.  The monster’s head fell in two neat halves like a ripe melon.  A moment later, all that was left of the Huntress’ carcass crumbled to brown, dirty ash.

Eowyn turned away, joyless and gray, deaf to the weak cries of relief on every side.  She stumbled, falling to her knees beside Legolas.  She bent and brushed back the bloody strands of his golden hair and kissed his lips softly. And as she did, she felt his last breath sigh away.  His lips were still warm, but no wind now stirred in his empty lungs.  She paid no heed to the shouts about her, the running feet and the voices that seemed to be speaking her name.  She lifted his limb body and held him, her cheek against his.

“Fly to your rest, my love,” she whispered.  “You are free of her and all evil things forever.” 

Dimly, as though from a great distance, she might have heard Gimli’s deep voice breaking in tearful denial, Aragorn’s harsh intake of breath, Thranduil’s beautiful baritone hoarse with cracked sobs.  She held Legolas close.  His heart, the strong drum of his life that had always beat so fiercely against her breast as they lay in each other’s arms, was quiet now, torn and stilled forever.  She held the fair, empty shell that had housed her lover’s soul and tried to picture him, beautiful and whole, flying to his long dead mother’s embrace beyond the Sundering Sea, across the Straight Way.  But she could not see that far, even in her imagination.  There was nothing now in the gray, frostbitten world but the cold, solitary bitterness of her loss.

Someone tried to take her hand gently, but she shook her head in silent, adamant refusal of any feeble attempts to give her comfort.  People were shouting now, some were singing, all lost in the euphoria of freedom, of victory when all had seemed hopeless.  Eowyn did not care.  She realized now that she could have born the loss of any other soul in the vale, even Eomer, and recovered in time.  Any soul except Legolas.  For with him, there would be no reunion in the untold hereafter.  He was gone and nevermore would she see him again.

“It is not fair,” she whispered.  She raised her head, gazing up at the star strewn sky.  The lights in the deaf heavens seemed dimmed of all radiance.

All but one.

Earendil shone like a far distant lighthouse, overly bright tonight.  Perhaps the Mariner could see them from his mighty ship and wept for the death of the son of Thranduil.  She wondered dully if Thranduil had known the half-elven prince of ancient Gondolin, the man who had become a star, and called him friend.

What did it matter.  She lowered her eyes, deaf to Aragorn’s soft words.

“Eowyn,” Aragorn said. His large hand covering hers felt warm.  She wished he would not touch her.  She did not want warmth.  “Eowyn, you must let him go.  His father and Gimli will see to him.”  She did not answer. 

“Let his father hold him, Eowyn.  He will care for Legolas while I see to your wounds.”  She knew she was behaving unforgivably.  She knew Thranduil’s grief was as great as hers, if not greater.  But she could not seem to move.  If she let Legolas go, let his father and kin tend him, bathe him, wash the blood and dust from his face and hair, then he would be truly gone.

“Please,” she said again, though she had no idea who it was she beseeched.  “Please, it is not fair!”

“Eowyn---“ Aragorn began.

“Let her be a moment,” Thranduil said softly.  He was weeping.  But it was not grief for one lost forever, only parted untimely.  And somehow, even in  the midst of his own terrible sorrow, he understood the difference in her loss and his own.  His hand closed over hers and he bent his fair head over his son’s still face and wept the tears she could not. 

The babble of voices around them had grown noticeably softer.  A faint glow, a silvery sheen of muted luminescence, bloomed in the corner of her eye.  Lying at her side, almost forgotten, Shard had begun to glow softly once more.  Eowyn frowned in tired confusion, drawing her hand from Thranduil’s to grip Shard’s pommel in a firm hold.  How in Arda could Simiasha still have an infinitesimal speck of like left in her foul ashes to trigger the sword’s power?  Eowyn had no will left for anything but revenge, but that would more than suffice here.

No one else seemed to have noticed; not Thranduil, not Gimli, not Aragorn.  The hushed murmur of voices around them had fallen away to dead silence.  Belatedly, Eowyn saw that the Square had brightened considerably.  The shimmering, pale nimbus of Shard’s power that seemed to be growing stronger by the second was not the solitary source of radiance.  Everyone in the Square sat suspended in stupefied wonder and not a little fear, gazing upward.

The Star of Hope was growing steadily brighter.  It hovered in the firmament, directly overhead.  It had somehow grown as large as a second Sun.  But this Sun was not golden.  It washed all things in pale, silvery blue, like twilight’s magic hour reflected upon the aqua-hued waters of the summer seas.

“How low he flies!” Aragorn said softly, almost fearfully.

“He does not fly,” Thranduil said in a hushed voice.  “He descends!  By the Bright Lady, Elessar!  I think your kinsman means to pay us a visit!”

They watched, thunder-struck in muted awe as the star that was not truly a star grew ever brighter in the night sky.  The pale blue light waxed in strength but it did not hurt the eyes to gaze directly upon it.  It had obscured the other stars in the heavens and now occupied a quarter of the sky.  Eowyn glanced down at her sword in amazement, for it seemed now that she held a second, smaller star in her hand.  It was…

Shard was honing to the source of its light, the Silmaril that had first imbued what had been simple crystal glass with it holy power.  Each second the Silmaril drew closer to Middle Earth Shard seemed to flare all the brighter, as a child might leap with joy to see its mother approach.  Far, far above, still riding higher that the tallest peak of the Misty Mountains, Eowyn imagined she could just make out a flash of gold, the glittering prow of Vingelot, and the shimmering ivory of ghostly sails of solid light fanned out above.

Take up the sword, my son.

The voice was very like Aragorn’s, and yet it was not.  It was deeper, stronger, like the tolling of a far sea bell.  Every note was like the sweetest song Eowyn had ever heard.  It rang clear and fair in the silence of her mind and each word seemed to warm and soothe the aching cold in her tired, beaten soul.

“I will, Lord,” Aragorn said.  He sounded as though his mouth had run dry of spit.  “Eowyn,” his eyes met hers, as dazed as her own, she was sure.  “Will you lend me your sword?”

Do as he asks, child, Earendil’s voice sang again in Eowyn’s mind.  Thy beloved is not beyond saving, but thou hast not the strength for this healing.

Eowyn all but thrust the sword into Aragorn’s hands.  Hope and fear reawakened inside her, so sudden and fierce and unlooked for her heart stuttered with the shock of it.  She caught Gimli and Thranduil’s eyes and saw there the same flash of vertigo and fearful pain.  Desperate hope was agonizing coming so close upon the heels of despair, but it was infinitely preferable.

Lay the sword upon his breast, son of Elros, the voice from above reverberated in their minds.  It is a conduit to the star upon my brow.  Draw what thou dost require for the healing and no more lest its power consume thy mortal flesh.

“This is cruel and fruitless foolery, thou arrogant Noldoli bastard!” Thranduil cried suddenly, sliding unconsciously into the same archaic dialect.  He raised a fist to the sky and turned his tear-streaked face upward. “That holy bauble upon thy brow hath great power, but it cannot raise the dead!”

Congenial as ever, old friend, came the wry reply, but it was tinged with gentle fondness. 

Aragorn had not paused to listen to this exchange, nor had Eowyn.  He lay the blade of Shard upon Legolas’ torn breast and Eowyn and Gimli held him.  It did not need two pairs of hands to prop up Legolas’ limp form but Eowyn did not begrudge Gimli’s help in the least.  She felt his rough, warm hand cover hers as they watched, not daring to breathe.  Aragorn’s face was lined with tense concentration as he poured every ounce of his strength into the task before him.  Shard became a blazing fire of radiance, a world of light and thrumming power.  It eclipsed all things above and below and did not fade.  Eowyn watched, her heart stumbling through an unsteady rhythm in her chest, praying as she had not prayed since the winter long vigil at her mother’s sickbed twenty years past. 

It is done, the voice of Earendil said at length with soft satisfaction.  Withdraw thy hand and will, Aragorn, lest it burn thy own heart to ash.  Thy strength is greater than that which thy mortal body can longer sustain.

Slowly, the light within the blade began to slip away, not fading so much as dispersing, washing outward to fill the Square and the darkened streets and houses beyond with a luminous shimmer that would not dissipate for many weeks. 

Eowyn paid this no mind.  She gazed down at Legolas’ face.  His tunic was torn where the wound had been, he was still covered in his own blood,

but the flesh beneath the jagged hole in his cotton shirt was whole again, showing no hurt.  His skin was warm, his color was high.  But still he did not breathe.  Aragorn saw this as well and leaned forward, laying two fingers on Legolas’ neck. 

“His heart is strong,” Aragorn murmured.  “But his lungs are empty---as though he were drawn half-drowned from a river!”  He glanced sharply at Thranduil.  “He needs cuilthul! 

“I know the method!” Thranduil snapped urgently.  He pushed forward, rude in his haste, all but tearing his son from Eowyn and Gimli’s arms.  He lay Legolas flat on his back, kneeling beside him while Aragorn moved with a hiss of pain as he jarred his broken leg and bent over the Elf’s head.  “I will press upon his breast, Elessar!  You must breathe the wind back into his body!"

Eowyn edged back, her hand still tightly wound in Gimli’s, her own wounds forgotten.  They counted in fours, Thranduil pressing rhythmically upon his son’s chest as Aragorn placed his mouth over Legolas’, breathing air back into his empty lungs.

“Breathe, lad!”  Gimli was murmuring, gripping Eowyn’s hand to tightly her fingers went numb.  “Breathe!”

Torturous moments crawled by in this fashion.  Eowyn barely noticed that Fallah now knelt beside her, clasping her one free hand, that her brother, and Shaeri and Suni and a dozen others were gathered about them in a silent circle.  Beside her, very softly, Eowyn heard Fallah praying in her own tongue. 

Legolas bucked suddenly, his back arching as he drew in one great gasping of breath and began coughing weakly.  Eowyn moaned softly and began to weep.  The world wheeled drunkenly about her, but she held onto consciousness with joyous tenacity.  Thranduil was bent over his son, kissing his face, speaking softly to him, his words choked with tears.  Aragorn held Legolas’ other hand, but his gray eyes were turned upward in exhausted wonder.

“Elrond told me there is a shadowland between life and the death of the body, a point where the heart has stopped and breath is stilled, but life yet remains in the brain.  And thus, the fea has yet to take leave of its house. He told me that if healing could be wrought with sufficient strength a patient might be saved, even in this extremity.”  He swallowed and the hand that held Shard trembled the slightest bit.  “Is---is that what we have done this night, Lord?”

It is, his forefather replied.  Do not fear, my son.  Thou hast not raised the dead, nor made any affront to the laws of Creation.  The child of Thranduil has great work before him.  His refrain in the Song of Arda is far from finished.  A choice, both blessed and bitter, is upon him.  But neither road will skirt his destiny, nor that of his bride.  Eowyn felt a chill of low, foreboding terror sweep through her at those words, though she could not have said why. 

I shall say no more, Earendil intoned.  The rest is for him to tell.  As he spoke, the Star above began to recede, rising quickly toward the heavens.  Fare thee well, Thranduil!  We shall meet again, by and by.  Farewell, Aragorn.  Elrond bids thee kiss the face of thy wife and son in his name.  And I would ask the same boon for my Lady and myself.  Farewell, Moussah of Harad.  And at this, Moussah, who stood just behind Shaeri, started, looking pale and shaken.  Thou art also a son of my line.  Listen to the wisdom of thine own heart, my son, above the teachings of thy fathers, and thou shalt be a great king.  Earendil’s words grew fainter, a distant echo, like a voice calling across the glassy plane of a wide lake.  Fare thee well, Eowyn of Rohan.  There are great deeds behind thee, but greater still before thee.  Be brave, and do not fear to love.  In the end, it is what matters most…

He was gone.

The twinkling glint of Gil-Estel journeyed  onward through the arch of the night.  Eowyn craned her head back, gazing upward in dizzy wonder.  She did not realize that she was falling until Gimli caught her as she toppled backward.

She never quiet lost consciousness, though some moments of the hour that followed would be fuzzier in her memory than others.  She dimly  remembered being carried in Eomer’s strong arms, away from the low, awestruck murmur that quickly built to a roar of cheering voices.  She caught a brief glance of Legolas’ sleeping face as Thranduil bore his son along as well to the relative privacy of Queen’s Guard Watch House.  It seemed she drifted away for the few seconds between the front door

and the rear barracks’ common room.  Her own quarters were too smoke damaged to enter, but miraculously, most of Queen’s Guard had escaped the fires of the previous night’s battle unscathed.  Eowyn remembered bits and pieces of the next little while.  She recalled her brother and Fallah stripping off her tattered mail and leathers, washing and tending her wounds.  She remembered Aragorn’s sharp cry when Gimli and Thranduil set his broken leg.  She drifted in and out of sleep listening to Fallah and Thranduil argue over the best way to splint a leg broken above the knee.  But her clearest recollection, the image that brought her back to full awareness, was of Legolas’ smooth, gentle fingers threading through hers and the sweet, verdant smell of his skin as he pressed his lips to her brow.  She roused, rising to meet his kiss.  He was half-sitting, half-laying beside her upon a makeshift sleeping pallet, smiling down at her.

“Good morning,” he said softly. 

She sat up with a wince and buried herself in his embrace.  He was warm and solid and blessedly, wondrously alive and well.  She withdrew, mute with too much emotion to voice.  Her fingers pressed through the weave of his clean, soft shirt, to touch his chest.  It was unmarred, as though he had never taken any hurt at all.  All conversation in the small barracks hearth room had stopped.  And then everyone began talking at once, converging in from every side, their faces alight with joy.  Thranduil lay a hand on his son’s cheek, staring deeply into Legolas’ eyes.  The King’s face was happy, but something he saw in his son’s gaze gave him pause.  He drew back a bit, his fair face troubled and apprehensive.  Gimli and Aragorn pressed forward, taking Legolas’s hands, while Fallah and Eomer hung back, their faces full of happiness, yet mixed with something incongruous.  It took Eowyn a moment to realize they were over-awed.  And a little afraid.

But as ever, it took Fallah’s curiosity less than a minute to override her fear.

“How do you feel?”  She as eagerly.

Eowyn saw with an odd mix of fondness and outrage that the crux of her friend’s question had little to do with her friendship or worry for Legolas.  Legolas saw this too, but it seemed to amuse him.  Eowyn withdrew from his arms just a little, staring at his face.  He seemed unchanged, but…

“Do you ask how I feel now?” He said with a quirk of one corner of his mouth.  “Or how did it feel to be dead?” And he laughed silently at the mortified look on Fallah’s face.  “I cannot say.  I did not die.  Though, I was…” He paused, considering his words.  “…elsewhere for a time.  I spoke with him for a while.  With Earendil.”  He eyed his father, mischief flickering in his bright eyes.  “He told me he was amazed that the line of Oropher had produced such an even-tempered youth as myself.”

Thranduil grunted something that sounded like, “Pompous Noldoli princelet!”

Legolas’ eyes grew solemn.  “He told me many things in a short space of time as I hovered between life and death. He said---“ He broke off, his face creasing with an indecipherable expression.  A little silence drew out.  He turned his eyes to Eowyn after a moment, seemed to draw strength from nothing more than the sight of her face.  “I think perhaps I am a little overwhelmed at the moment.”

Eowyn nodded, watching the play of emotions across his features.  “That is no great wonder.” 

He studied her closely.  “How do you feel?  You were sorely hurt!”

“How do I feel?”  She smiled at the absurdity of such a question from him.  She flexed her wounded shoulder, feeling only a sharp twinge of pain.  But she had been sliced nigh to the bone!  Now, it was little more than a pang of discomfort when she moved.  Either the healing rays of Shard’s power had somehow spilled over into her or----“

“Oh, no…” She lay one hand against her mouth, an angry knot of despair forming in her chest.  You are bound in blood to my darkness forever, Simiasha had told them.  “We are still unclean!” She said, her voice thick with tears.  “We---we are not free---!”

“Not so!” Thranduil said sharply.  “She is dead, glorfinniel!  The source of your malady is no more.  “Long ago, I was part of the band of warriors who cleaned out the nests of Thuringwethil’s scions that sprang up on the outskirts of our settlements at the Mouths of Sirion.  On one occasion, we found living Edain, Lord Tuor’s kinsmen, who we rescued from the burning.  The were alive, but half changed.  When their master was slain, they slowly returned to normal, though not instantly.  It took a bit of time for their bodies to purge the poison completely.” 

“Would aethelas tea speed the process along?” Aragorn asked.

“Not as far as Galadriel and the Lady Elwing were able to discern,” Thranduil replied. 

“How long?” Eowyn asked tensely.  “How long until we---we are whole again?”

“I think---or my heart tells me---that the Silmaril washed the stain from Legolas’ body as it healed him.”  Thranduil studied her, his expression unreadable. 

“How long for Gimli and Eowyn?” Aragorn repeated her question with a frown.

“Two of the four we saved were butchered, defending the Havens when the son of Feanor---“ He stopped, his face gray with old horror and old rage.  “Of the two that survived the massacre, one was a young woman, the other a girl child of ten.” Thranduil eyed Eowyn again with that odd, inscrutable stare.  “While the taint still flowed in their veins, they did not age, but remained locked in stasis, unchanged from the moment they first tasted of darkness.  The child, Gilian, remained a child---in body, at least---for five score years before she began to grow again.  The woman conceived and bore a child one hundred and twenty years after she was infected.  That is how she knew she was free of the malady at last.”

Eowyn stared back at him, dumbfounded.  One hundred years.  One hundred years or more to live with this black vileness inside her.  She began to shake her head, willing it to be a lie.  Her eyes filled with tears of helpless sorrow and rage.  Legolas’ hand gripped hers, warm and strong.

“I---I do not think I can bear it!” She sobbed.

“You can,” Thranduil said flatly.  “You can and you will bear it, daughter.  For my son’s sake, if not your own!”

“Adar---“ Legolas began, his face darkening with anger.

“Will we lose ourselves in bloodlust as we did in the battle two nights past?” Gimli asked suddenly.  “Will we crave blood?  Will we dream of darkness and murder?  Or will we simply live on unchanged until the last of the poison works it way out of our bodies?”

Thranduil was silent a moment.  “The woman and the child were stronger, faster and more durable that Man or Elf.  They healed in a day after taking grievous hurt.  They—they wrestled at times with a kind of fell leaning toward violence when roused to anger, but I do not know how much of that was their own anger at the evil around them coupled with their added strength. The woman found she could sense when dark things were nigh and she became a hunter of evil creatures.  But otherwise, they were true to their own innate natures.”

Gimli pondered this for a moment.  Then he finally snorted.  “Well, then!  There’s no use fretting if there’s no help for it.  I had worried about living long enough to see Algarond finished anyway.  It seems I shall have more time to labor upon my life’s work than I thought!”

Eowyn regarded him with mild amazement as he mentally set that matter aside as though it were a mild annoyance in which he had just found some serendipitous benefit. 

“You heard my father,” Legolas told her intently.  “You will not lose yourself in darkness while the effects of our ordeal linger.  You will simply live a bit longer than is natural for a mortal of you lineage.”

“You will know the last dram of poison has departed when your monthly courses return,” Thranduil told her, speaking more gently than before.  “Until then, you shall not age a day.  But neither may you conceive.”

“That---!” Eomer said with an embarrassed sputter.  “That is an unseemly subject to broach in the company of a maid, my Lord!” 

Thranduil eyed him with displeasure and mild pity.  “Your sister is the bride of my son and therefore, most notably, not a maid.  Mistress Fallah is a physician among her people, not a sheltered child.  Moreover, I imagine, as women, they both have more than a nodding acquaintance with these matters.”  Fallah made a noise that sounded like a muffled giggle.  “But I beg your pardon, my Lord of Rohan, if I have trod upon your own delicate sensibilities.”

Eomer turned red, but before he could utter and angry retort, Thranduil had turned back to Eowyn, regarding her kindly.  She wondered if she had passed some sort of final test in his mind in her failure to be pleased at the prospect of lengthened years at any cost.

“If---if Gimli and I can live our lives without a press of darkness upon our minds and hearts, then---“ She sighed, feeling so tired she felt as though she could sleep a year.  “Then, I will endure it.  I suppose I have no choice.”  But still, her heart caught in a little stitch of sadness.  “But---but you have said that until I am wholly cleansed, I will be—be barren?”

“But not forever,” Legolas said softly.

Thranduil snorted, eyeing Eowyn and his son in turn.  “Such woeful faces!  Most newly wedded couples prefer a decade or ten to themselves without children underfoot.”  His lips curled minutely.  “I supposed I must forego the hope of dark-haired grandchildren altogether.”

“Adar,” Legolas said suddenly. “Maniel and the others may be injured or worse, for they were chained and beaten as you were.”

“And I should see to them,” Thranduil said.  He drew one hand down his son’s face as though to reassure himself once more that he did not dream.  He smiled, but a shadow of gnawing worry still dimmed his bright eyes.

“I will go with you, O King,” Fallah said shortly.  She was already gathering up her physician’s bag.  “You may need another pair of healer’s hands.”

“Aye,” said Eomer shortly, rising.  “I should look to my own men.”

“I thank you, harwen,” Thranduil said with a polite nod.  His eyes did not leave his son’s.  “You should rest, my son.  We will speak of many things later, I am sure.”  He rose and left without a backward look. 

“What does ‘harwen’ mean, my Lord?” Fallah’s voice grew fainter as she followed the Elvenking out into the early morning light.  Thranduil’s rich chuckle echoed back through the empty forward barracks.

Eomer bent low and kissed Eowyn’s cheek.  “I will see you after you have rested, sister.  Sleep well.  Eru knows you have earned it!” 

“Your lord father’s parting words sounded almost like a threat, my friend,” Gimli snorted.

“A promise, more like,” Legolas said solemnly, his bright eyes troubled.

Aragorn was regarded him curiously.  “Aye, he was not fooled by your less than subtle ploy to get him to leave and see to his warriors.  He was fairly dancing from foot to foot with curiosity. I confess, so am I.”

“He will press me until I tell all,” Legolas said softly.  “And I shall.  But not now, and not with other eyes looking on.”

“Tell what?” Gimli frowned, looking profoundly confused.

“Earendil told you more than he revealed to us,” Eowyn said.  As memory flowed back, she began to better understand Thranduil’s apprehension.  “He spoke of a choice and a destiny from which you could not turn aside.”

Legolas was silent, his eyes turned inward.

“My friend,” Gimli began, “you need not say ought if you---“

“Nay, Gimli,” Legolas raised a hand.  “I must speak.  I fear I will burst if I do not, for it is too much to keep to myself.”  He sighed.  “Oh, but my father will grieve so…”

“Is it so terrible?” Aragorn asked hesitantly.  He sounded, almost, as if he did not wish to hear the answer.

“Terrible and wonderful,” Legolas replied.  “And frightening.  But I suppose true prophesy always is.”  And at these words, Eowyn felt a tangible chill pass through all those present.  Legolas set his hand in hers and paused a moment before continuing.  “Let me speak of the most urgent news first.  Earendil and Mithrandir petitioned the Valar themselves and won leave to warn us of our danger.  Sauron is overthrown, the Mariner told me, but another power---one equal in cunning, though less in raw strength---will soon try to rise in his place.  He bade us remember that the Ainur have power and craft beyond our ken and may rise again in another form should their bodies be slain.  This message Mithrandir bade Earendil carry to us all. ‘Be watchful, my young friends, but do not jump at shadows.  I cannot say with utter surety, but I believe the dark power we have sensed stirring in Arda may already be known to you, at least in part.  He will come in a form that is pleasing.  He will not strike with brute force for he is yet weak.  He will seek to destroy Gondor and all his enemies in more subtle ways.  Be ware, and trust your hearts in discerning friend from foe.  Do not refuse the hand of those who seek redemption.  Make haste to Gondor, Aragorn, for this enemy will make himself known within the year.  Do not fear for Arwen and the babe.   They are already under the wing of a strong protector, though they do not know it.  Farewell!  I send my blessing and my love!  If I could, I would return to aid you, but my time in Middle Earth is finished.’”  Legolas paused.  “I will have some pivotal part to play in this matter, though what or how Mandos did not reveal.”

“Well, that is marvelous!” Gimli growled into the long silence that followed.  “How many times must one of the Ainur be slain to stay decently dead?!”

“More than once, it seems,” Aragorn murmured darkly. “These are heavy tidings.  I find myself remembering something Bilbo Baggins said on the eve of the War.  ‘Don’t adventures ever have an end?’” He sighed, sounding as tired as Eowyn felt.  “Is this tied to the choice Earendil spoke of?”

“No,” Legolas said.  “That is another matter entirely and my burden alone.” He paused and inhaled slowly as though to steady himself.  His hand in hers tightened, but Eowyn could feel the minute tremble that passed through him.  “I hardly know where to begin.”

“Let me help you,” Aragorn said.  “Does this concern your mother’s father?  The one who was called Taurion?”

If Aragorn had suddenly grown a pair of horns from his forehead, Legolas would have looked less surprised.  But shock faded slowly into an odd, wounded frown.  “You knew?” Legolas asked softly.  It sounded almost like an accusation.  “How long have you known, Estel?”

“I knew nothing,” Aragorn replied.  “The year we met, when you first summered in Imladris, I overheard Elrond and Glorfindel talking.”

Legolas’ lips twitched, though his body radiated a stunned, hurt sense of betrayal.  “Aye, you were a champion little eavesdropper.”

“I was crawling beneath the floor, pretending I was spying upon the counsels of the Enemy,” Aragorn said.  “Elrond himself knew nothing with surety.  He only had suspicions which he was never able to confirm.  Long ago, before the Last Alliance, he questioned your mother about her father, but as she had no memory of him and her own mother was also dead, there was nothing she could tell him.  And he did not trouble her mind with half-wrought suspicions.”

Legolas nodded in acceptance, but the tension in his body did not relax as he gazed on his friend.  He turned and, seeing the patent confusion on the faces of Gimli and Eowyn, smiled.  “My mother’s father was called Taurion. He was a foundling of sorts.  Silvan hunters came upon him in the deep woods, a half-grown lad, almost completely feral.  This was long ago, before the War of Wrath, when Morgoth still ravaged Arda unchecked.  The Silvans took him to be an orphan of the wars and many evils of the Great Enemy.  They taught him speech again and he learned, in time, to be an Elf once more.  But of his own origins, he remembered almost nothing, save that he once had a brother who was slain by wolves.  Those who knew him, say that he had the look of the Sindar and that he was the greatest archer since Beleg Strongbow.  He wed young, to a Silvan maid who bore him a daughter---my mother, Alothlas.  He died before his child learned to walk, slain fighting Orcs.”  He turned back to Aragorn, his face blank, veiling the anger he was trying to contain.  “Tell me if you know, Estel---what was it that drew Elrond’s attention?  What did you overhear?”

“He told Lord Glorfindel that when he beheld your mother in the court of Oropher for the first time he nearly cried out with shock.  He said she was the living image of his mother.”  Aragorn was somber, his face pulled into a pained frown.  “You are angry with me, my friend.  I am sorry for that, but being a child, I did not weigh of puzzle the matter out for long years.  And then---what should I have said, even if it had been my place to speak?  If you had gone searching for the answers to the questions Elrond’s words would have raised, where would you have found them?  It would have gnawed at you, a mystery three ages old with no answer to be found among the living.”  Aragorn lowered his proud head at the unconscious reproach that still lingered in Legolas’ eyes.  “And I thought also, if it were true, would not word have come from the Valar?  If not before, than surely after the War of Wrath?  Would they not have known your father still lived and offered him and his daughter the same choice that was offered Elrond and Elros?”

“What?!”  Gimli fairly exploded.  “What say you, Aragorn?  You both discuss the matter while dancing around it at the same time, without passing a single direct word between you!  Aragorn!  Stop being so Elvish---for I know Legolas cannot---and tell us plainly what has been discovered!”

Legolas turned his bright, troubled eyes upon his friend and smiled again, a little sadly.  “I am less Elvish than you think, my dear Gimli.”  And when Gimli growled aloud in confused frustration, Legolas raised his hand.  “Peace, my friend!  I will tell you all, I swear it.” 

Legolas turned back to Aragorn and regarded his friend in sudden quiet dismay.  The King of Gondor was sitting a little apart from them with his head slightly bowed, regret and sorrow bleeding from the light of his great spirit. His expression made her think of Eomer as a boy when he had done something to displease Theodred.  “Forgive me, Legolas, if you can.  I did not mean---“

“There is nothing to forgive, Estel,” Legolas told him. “I am sorry!  I understand your reasons for keeping silent.  I am not angry with you, only---only a little overwrought, in general, I think.  I cannot recall ever having been so unsettled, so full of fear and great joy and sadness, all at once.”  He was silent a moment, as though gathering his thoughts.  “Gimli, Eowyn---the Mariner gave me my grandsire’s true name.  His name was Elured and he was the child of Dior Eluchil, who was King of Doriath.  Dior, who was the only child of Beren and Luthien.”  He regarded Aragorn with a small wistful quirk of his lips.  “I was filled with nothing but joy at first, for I was happy to call you cousin, Estel, and Arwen as well.”  And at this, Aragorn lay a hand upon his arm, a wordless gesture of love such as men exchange when words seem inadequate. 

“Well!”  Gimli said with a perplexed scowl.  “That is certainly news!  Now that I think on it, your father said something touching on this bit of knowledge when we last journeyed to Mirkwood.”

Legolas stared at him.  “What did he say?”

“It was late and you had wondered off with your old friend Ambaril to see his new baby son---the first child born in Mirkwood since the War.  Your father was a tad in his cups by that time and more talkative than on my first visit.  He told me your grandsire’s lost lineage must have been high indeed, for you mother had been fairer, brighter and nobler than any daughter of the Silvan people or his own Sindarin kin.”

“He always says so when he speaks of her,” Legolas murmured, with a faint smile.

“I still do not see why this is such a great and earth-shaking revelation,” Gimli went on.  “Surely, it is a fine thing to learn you are of the line of Beren and Luthien, but---“ Gimli suddenly stopped speaking.  His mouth slowly fell open in abject shock.  “This choice you have been speaking of…”

“Aye, Gimli,” Legolas said.  “To leave Middle Earth and dwell in Elvenhome forever.  Or to stay and choose a mortal life.  Earendil told me the Sea Longing which took hold in my heart at Pelagir would be laid aside for me so that I could choose with an unfettered heart.”

Eowyn stared at his face and lowered her eyes, feeling a slow-witted fool for understanding only now what Legolas meant.  Her heart seemed to have shuddered to a halt in her breast, her breath had stilled.  Her whole world stood motionless, balanced upon the scale of what Legolas would say next.

“I have chosen already,” Legolas said.  He took her chin beneath his hand and gently raised her head, smiling into her eyes.  “I choose this world that I love, this time, this place.  I choose you, Eowyn.  I choose Gimli and Estel and Arwen and Sam and Merry and Pippin and---” He kissed her, caring not at all that Gimli and Aragorn were looking on.  He brushed the tears that had begun to leak from her eyes.  She felt as though she would shake apart with joy.  “Shh!  Hush now, meleth-nin!”

“I cannot!” She hiccuped, and laughed in weepy embarrassment.  “I cannot stop!”

Gimli was peering at Legolas closely, though his own face and beard looked suspiciously damp.  “You do not seem any different.  And you certainly don’t look a wit let Elvish.”

“I shall not change magically into a Man, Gimli,” Legolas grinned.  “I shall never be a Man---I shall be an Elf who is mortal.  But you are right.  I have made my choice and yet nothing has changed.  Time washes past me, leaving me untouched as it has since I left my childhood behind.”

“Arwen made her choice thirty years ago when we plighted our troth in Lothlorien,” Aragorn said quietly.  “But she could not relinquish her immortal birthright until there was not a shred of doubt in her heart.  I think, as it was for her, that which stays the change is not hesitation, but love.  You fear, as Arwen feared, to bring such a terrible grief to your father whom you love.”

Legolas regarded him with wide, horrified eyes, and it seemed the full realization of what his decision would do to his father struck him again like a hammer blow to the chest.  He nodded and closed his eyes against the tears that were gathering there.

“That is the true choice of the peredhel, I think,” Aragorn said.  “The bittersweet choice that must leave you bereft of someone you love forever, whatever decision you make.  Until your heart makes peace with what you have chosen, Legolas, you will remain suspended between both worlds as Arwen was.”

“Aye,” Legolas breathed, a sighing note of sorrow.

Much more was said thereafter.  Words of love were exchanged, words of thanks and undying friendship.  They spoke of the past and the uncertain future, and of Gandalf and Earendil’s warning.  At some point, Eowyn decided to rest her eyes as she sat with her head upon Legolas’ shoulder, listening to the Elf and Dwarf bicker about the number of Hunters each of them had slain since arriving in Rhunballa.  Gimli was arguing adamantly that the burning of the Nest could not be added to Legolas’ tally as Eowyn had most likely done more than half the work in that endeavor.  Eowyn fell asleep smiling.

She woke briefly as some indeterminate hour to the sound of Aragorn’s soft snores.  It was night again, she sensed.  She had slept the entire day away.  Legolas lay beside her, singing softly, almost under his breath.  His gaze seemed fixed upon her as he stroked her hair, but his face bore a peculiar expression, as though he were immersed in a sweet daydream.

“You should sleep,” she whispered.

“I am sleeping,” he said, kissing her lightly.

She was asleep again herself before she could puzzle long over her words.

When she woke again, it was morning.  Legolas was gone, but Aragorn was sitting beside her, his splinted leg stretched out before him.  He was sipping gingerly on a mug of what smelled like Fallah’s willow bark tea.

“Last night I conspired with your brother’s help,” Aragorn told her with a wry grin, “to leave for a while and see to my men.  But now Mistress Fallah has imprisoned me here until midday.”

“Even a king may not gainsay a physician,” Eowyn said with a small smile.

“Hmm,” Aragorn mused.  “Being both, I had hoped for some special clemency.  Fallah was unmoved by my pleas.”  He sobered and regarded her for a long moment as though carefully considering her words.  “Earendil said that neither Legolas nor his bride might turn aside from the task fate has set aside for him.”

“I am very tired of fated tasks,” Eowyn said softly, almost angrily.

“You are not alone, my friend,” Aragorn chuckled without mirth.  “Gandalf said that this Enemy will strike Gondor from within, and soon.  I shall leave tomorrow morning if I must ride in the back of a carter’s wagon or upon a litter.  Tell me, Eowyn---what are your plans?”

“I---“ She shook her head.  “I do not know.  I must help Rhunballa rebuild, at least for a month or two.  But…I cannot set aside this warning or my  obligation to the safety of Rohan and of Gondor.  And there is now Legolas to consider.  It is as though the pieces of my life have been hurled aloft and I cannot yet say how or where they will land.”

“Will you come to Gondor?” Aragorn asked simply.

Eowyn studied him.  And slowly, she drew a deep breath and released the sense of belonging and of home she had felt in this land.  Rhunballa would go forward to a better future, but Eowyn would not be there to see it.  She must leave.  For a host of different reasons, she must leave and return to the West. 

“I suppose I must,” she replied hesitantly.

Aragorn nodded grimly.  “Whatever is to come will begin in Minas Tirith.  Earendil has prophesied that you and Legolas and shall be instrumental in defeating this evil.”

“And we should be there to meet it head on,” Eowyn agreed softly.  She lowered her eyes.  “How should I come to Minas Tirith, my lord?  In what capacity?”  She saw the confusion in his kind gray eyes and sighed.  “I cannot even think how I will bear the stares and whispers of my own countrymen when I return to the West.  Let alone the proud folk of your realm.  Surely the rumors have reached your ears.  Aragorn, if I come to Gondor at your invitation, an unwed woman in the eyes of Men----“ She shuddered lightly.  “Even were I to arrive with Legolas at my side, still it would bring a storm of gossip that would shake the Citadel to its foundations.  I would not be the cause of a scandal that would bring grief to you or your beloved, for all that it is a wicked lie.”

“I neither heed nor fear the slander of idle fools, Eowyn,” Aragorn said quietly.  “Nor does Arwen.  Nor should you.  Though I know it is more difficult for you to ignore.  It is a shame upon the race of Men that I should suffer no more than an oafish chuckle or wink among my courtiers when your name is mentioned, while you---“ He sighed, shaking his head, and spoke almost to himself.  “It is hard to live among Men sometimes.  Even after four years I often feel like a stranger among my own kind.  Though we have it in us to aspire to the heavens, too often we stumble into the gutter.  Eowyn, I cannot tell you what to do, or how you will be received by my people at first.  But I can say with surety that all who come to know you will see naught in you but a noble, brave, and virtuous woman to whom they now owe their lives twice over.  I will tell you as one who is thrice your age that running from this sort of thing only gives it leave to grow in your absence.  If my people knew you, I think they would love you.  And all rumor would be born out as blatant falsehood.”

Eowyn was silent, considering.

“There is an old law in Gondor,” Aragorn said.  “A concession in the codes of heraldry.  It was written with the princes of the House of Eorl in mind.  The Fosterling’s Oath, they call it.”

“I know of it,” Eowyn said.  “Theoden swore this oath in his youth.”

“It is an oath of knighthood in service to Gondor for the span of three years,” Aragorn explained.  “To be released from service before that time at the discretion of the King or the Steward should the throne of Rohan fall to the boy untimely.  The title of knight of the realm is forever, though your service would be temporary.  In this way, I would honor you with my right hand while shielding you from the snares of impropriety.”

“This would shield me from gossip, you say?” Eowyn shook her head.  “Aragorn, you propose to knight a woman who is commonly regarded as your---“ She clamped her mouth shut before she said something that was truly improper. 

“It will cause more talk at first, I know,” Aragorn said.  “But it will give you a standing in Gondorhim society that does not want for a man at your side.  It has never been done before, but as the young Hajila Dai of Harad pointed out several days ago, a king may always make new law.  As a knight of Gondor, you would have a proper place in my court.”  He paused.  “And a measure of autonomy from your brother who is still, by the laws of Gondor and Rohan, your legal guardian.”

“Until I am decently wed,” Eowyn said softly, her hands clenching in impotent anger at the way of the world.  At the end of the day, East and West were not so very different in their regard of a woman’s status.  “I will come, my lord,” she said formally after a moment,  “and trust your wisdom in this, though I am less optimistic than you in my own ability to win the hearts of your folk.  Four years of freedom have made me intolerant of the constraints the world places upon women.  You are right.  I can absolve myself of nothing unless I return to the West.  But none of this matters in the grand scheme.  I will come because you ask it, Aragorn.  I will come because I will be needed.  I would fight my way through all the demons of the Outer Night to come to Legolas’s side and aid him in this task.  I will do all in my power to keep your realm and this world safe from what it coming.  Whether the Gondorhim like it or not.”

To this, Aragorn responded with a fond smile and a nod of acknowledgement.  And thus, their bargain was sealed.

Eowyn rose two hours past noon and went to seek Legolas.   Aragorn was gone and Fallah had left no guard to confine her to Queen’s Guard.  She wandered the streets, taking note of the odd shimmer that lingered in the air, chasing away every shadow.  The City seemed brighter, cleaner somehow, for all that a quarter of its standing structures were smoke-damaged or burned outright.  There was music and snatches of song everywhere, both joyful celebration and mourning dirges for the dead.  People wandered about in the strange phantom glimmering left by the Silmaril, looking as though there were unsure as to whether they were lost in some fair dream or walking in the waking world.

Eowyn passed a cadre of Riders who bowed as though she were a great queen, and their faces---

Oh, good gods, they looked like men praying at the feet of Elbereth herself, Eowyn thought with an internal wince.

She found Suni standing in the ruins of the Royal Villa, hefting her youngest son on her hip.  Rhunballa’s new queen was sad-eyed as Eowyn approached.  Eowyn saw that she was wearing Ikako’s sword, Shin-kun, on her hip. 

“We have lost much, my sister,” Suni said softly.  She stared down at her boots which were ankle deep in soot and ash.  “I cannot think how to begin again.”

“We might have lost all,” Eowyn told her.  “But that thought has never made grief for those lost easier to bear.”

“Aye,” Suni agreed.  “The sages would say the greatest honor we can give the fallen is to live a good life, and thus, their deaths will not have been for naught.  I know this to be true.  But I mourn, nonetheless.”  She fixed Eowyn with a searching eye.  “Your brother and your king shall depart on the morrow, Elessar says.  What will you do, my Captain?”

“I must go as well,” Eowyn said.  “Though not tomorrow and only by your leave.  I will stay a month or two.”

“You have my love and do not need my leave,” Suni smiled sadly.

“You have sworn no oaths to me.  But should you return, this is your home, for all time.”

They embraced as closest kin.  Eowyn left Suni standing straight and tall as a spear, solemnly contemplating what manner of kingdom should would raise from the ashes about her.

Eowyn found her brother with the bulk of his Riders down in the fallow soy fields where they had made their camp since arriving in Rhunballa.  He greeted her with pleased joy, guiding her to his own tents, for he knew her well enough to knew she would find the near-worship of their countrymen unbearable.

“If you do not wish them to stare at you so,” Eomer remarked lightly, “you should refrain from saving the world the next time the opportunity presents itself.”

“That is not funny,” she said, taking the cup of cold mead he offered her.

“I do not jest, sister,” he said.  “You did not have that---” His mouth twisted as though he might wretch, “---that thing inside your mind as the rest of us did.  My recollection is mercifully foggy. But Bright Lady, sister! I do not have words to describe the---the evil and sickness she woke in my mind and heart.  In those few hours, I would have laughed as I butchered my sweet wife and unborn child had she commanded it!”  He shuddered, and suddenly his face paled as another memory rose up in his mind.  “She---she made me want---Oh, Eowyn, I remember now that she commanded I hurt you, that I---I---” He broke off, his breath coming short.

“You did not hurt me,” Eowyn said gently, taking his hands in hers. 

He sagged, wilting with relief.  After a moment, he frowned and visibly shoved the dark memories aside.  It had ever been his way to deal with horrifying experiences by simply not dealing with them.  He put them away and thought of them no more.  Eowyn had always envied him that ability. 

“She would have covered the earth with her foul kind and made cattle of every living thing.  You stopped her, Eowyn.  Do not doubt the truth of my words when I say you saved us all.”  His frown deepened and paused.  “Aragorn and I have spoken.”

“And?” She braced herself for a row, but he surprised her.

“And I disagree with his decision to bring you to Gondor, but I will trust him in this, as in other things.  It would be easier if Legolas came with you.”  He glowered unhappily.  “It would be even better if the two of you were wed.”  He studied her closed face and gave a low growl of exasperation.  “What ails you, Eowyn?  He loves you and you are utterly besotted with him.  Why do you hesitate?”

She was silent a moment.  “In part, because of Earendil’s words.  Aragorn has no doubt told you all we know of our present danger.  The Mariner imparted a warning and a prophesy.  And upon Legolas, he bestowed a double-edged gift.  I will not say more.  It is for Legolas to tell you the rest if he will.  Trust that there are reasons to delay, brother, and they are not light.”

He nodded slowly.  “Will you come with us on the morrow?”

“I must stay a while yet,” Eowyn said.  “Duty and friendship demand it.”

“Be it so,” he said resignedly.  “But one day soon, you must return to the Riddermark.  I will be a father by the time the leaves fall.  When the…whatever it is has passed, I would ride beside you across the grasslands of our country as we did before Saruman darkened our land.”

“I would like that as well,” she said, her eyes stinging.

She took her leave of him and sought Legolas among the Gondorhim and the Elves of Mirkwood. She found the King of Eryn Lasgalen sitting beside Fallah in New Bakery.  It had apparently been reconverted into a House of Healing once more.  The worst of the wounded, those who could not be moved to the rice fields, had been slain outright be the Hunters.  But there were still hundreds of wounded soldiers and civilians who had been moved from the storehouses in the rice paddocks during the course of the previous day.  Beside Fallah and the Elvenking, an Elvish healer sat pouring over the list of Rhunballani and Somalani herbal remedies the Apothecary’s Daughter had furnished him.  The scholarly looking Elf, whose name Eowyn could not recall for the life of her, was leaning forward excitedly, nearly elbowing his Lord aside in his enthusiasm.

“…and not one of these herbs have I seen since before the world was broken!”  The healer exclaimed.  “I had thought they were lost forever when Beleriand was drowned.  And this one grew exclusively on the isle of Numenor---and yet you say they all grow wild throughout this valley, Mistress Fallah?”

Fallah nodded, a pall of grief shot through the brightness of her kind smile.  “I will show them all to you, Master Gaernell.  If you wish, I will send seedlings back with your folk when you depart.”

Thranduil eyed Eowyn as she approached, remaining silent as Eowyn and Fallah exchanged greetings.  “Legolas is with the son of Gloin, preparing some bit of mischief I doubt not, for he would not tell me where he went or what he meant to do.” He rose, towering a full head taller than Eowyn, his face a curious mixture of affection and that same terrible gnawing apprehension he had shown after Legolas woke in Queen’s Guard.  Elbereth, he saw too deeply with those twin delving spears he called eyes.  She lowered her gaze for fear that he might somehow ferret out the secret Legolas alone should tell him.  The secret that would surely break his great heart beyond mending.

“Will you walk with me a bit, my Lady?” He asked simply.

“As you wish, my Lord,” she said as casually as she was able. 

They moved through the rows of bunks, passing the bed where Shaeri sat beside Insis, holding her unconscious sister’s hand.  Moussah of Harad stood at Shaeri’s side, proud and coolly reserved.  But something in his pose conveyed comfort and caring though he did not touch Shaeri at all.  Insis’ color was good.  She appeared to be sleeping soundly.

“She will be fully healed in time,” Shaeri told Eowyn.  “Insis was one of those thought too badly hurt to be moved when we evacuated the City.  When darkness fell upon us all, Moussah grabbed me and shook me so hard I thought my neck would snap, and brought me back to myself for a short time.  We kept our wits just long enough to hide Insis before---before the Hunters began killing the wounded.”

Eowyn unbuckled the black scabbard lashed to her hip and removed Shard from its shadowy bower.  She lay the flat black scabbard in Moussah’s hands.  “I thank you for the use of the Daegond, Moussah of Harad,” she said formally.  “I return it to you and your people.”

Moussah bowed low.  “Mak-liazg,” he said.  “For so you shall be named in Harad while I live, Lady.  The Golden Lioness.  I was right. You are she.”

She gazed curiously into his dark brown eyes, seeing for the first time that there were little flecks of gold and green there, a lingering remnant of his Numenorian blood.  He was looking her straight in the eye.  He smiled.  “She who is my firstwife calls you sister,” he explained.  “And thus, you and I are kin.  All of Harad owes you a blood debt, Lady of Rohan.  You have but to ask and I shall repay.”

“I have yet to say I will be firstwife to you, presumptuous one,” Eowyn heard Shaeri tell him archly as they moved away.  “And it shall be ‘onlywife’ if you know what is good for you!”

And to this, Moussah only chuckled.  “The same applies to you, my cat.  Stray from my bed and I will likewise be avenged.”

“They shall either make a passionate, loving marriage or die upon each other’s blades,” Thranduil commented.  “I would cast my wager in the girl’s favor as to who would prevail.”

“Shaeri knows nothing if not how to handle Haradrim men,” Eowyn told him.

They made their way to the porter’s entrance, and Eowyn followed his lead wordlessly as he led her along Shop Street and into the Launderers.  He stopped just short of the large wash basins, breathing in the clean scent of sinisi blossoms.  Thranduil turned to regard her intently and she returned his piercing stare a little sadly.

“I fear to learn what secret fills your young eyes with such pity when you look upon me, glorfinniel,” he said softly.  “Nay, do not speak.  I would not have you reveal what is not yours to tell.  I will know all too soon.” He sighed heavily.  “It would be a wondrous, impossible thing to achieve a victory just once in my long life that did not feel like a defeat.  That was not stained with the blood of those I love.”

“I do not think such a thing exists in Middle Earth, my Lord,” Eowyn said sadly.

“You speak the truth,” he said.  His eyes were dark and sorrowful.  “My heart is full of prophetic dread.  Legolas and I have spoken.  He has told me a portion of what the Mariner revealed, of the danger that Mithrandir and the Valar themselves have spied looming before us.  He was recalled from the very threshold of Mandos’ Halls to face some terrible destiny, a threat which he was apparently born to oppose.”  He shook his fair head sadly.  “I knew he was special.  All his life.  He is fairer, stronger and…higher somehow.

I have always been overly proud, not fearing there would be a price to pay for the blessing of such a son.  Now, I find myself wishing he were a bit more ordinary.  It is a terrible thing to see the gods touch your child upon the shoulder.  For as with Frodo Baggins, those the Valar chose as their instruments are too often consumed by their destinies.”

Eowyn’s skin crawled with dread.  It was as though he had just defined and crystallized the terrible fear that had lain lodged in her belly all day like a cold stone. 

“What do you wish of me?” She asked.  Had she gazed in a looking glass, she was sure she would have seen Thranduil’s taut, fearful expression mirrored in his own face.

“According to Earendil’s words, you shall me as enmeshed in this struggle as Legolas,” Thranduil said steadily.  “He has said he will return with me to Eryn Lasgalen for a short time, perhaps a season.”  He saw her face fall, saw the pain in her eyes at nothing more than the thought of Legolas’ absence, and gave her a small, bitter smile. “Do not grieve, child.  The Huntress is slain and Legolas’ blood is purged of her darkness by the Silmaril.  His love for you is as strong and true as it was yesterday and the day before, and did not fade with Thuringwethil’s power.  He may return home with me for a space of time, but he will fly to your side ere long, for I do not think his heart will bear a lengthy separation.  I will send him to you laden with bridal gifts, late though they be.  Should the two of you set a date for a mortal wedding ceremony, I will attend.  Though I do not understand how the two of you could be more married than you already are.”  He took her hands and stared deeply into her eyes, and his gaze seemed to pierce the darkest niches of her soul, laying bare every selfish, petty thought and impulse.  She bore his scrutiny and did not flinch away, though she wanted nothing more than to sun screaming away from that all-seeing, ancient stare.

In the end, however, it was Thranduil who lowered his proud, bright eyes.

“I am sorry.  That was an unpardonable intrusion. Like a selfish, bitter wretch, I hoped to find something in your heart that was unworthy of my son.  But you---” And again, he sighed.  “If I could have fashioned the perfect bride for him, it would have been you.”

“Save than I am mortal,” she said.

“Aye,” he replied. His voice was like a soft rumble that heralds a downpour.

“I tell you in plainest truth, I would to the Valar that you and he had never met, glorfinniel.  For I have a terrible, cold fear that what ere betide, he shall be lost to me forever.”

There was no answer that would not betray the weighty choice Legolas now faced.  Her heart ached like a broken bone for this good man, this good father.  He had lost everyone he had ever loved except his one dear son. Now, he would lose Legolas as well.  And he knew it, sensed it, though he did not yet know why or how it would happen.  She stood on tip toes and kissed his cheek.

“The Valar make a way, my Lord,” she said gently.  “For all good souls.  We must trust in that Truth.”

“Wise child,” he murmured.  “I have spoken to Elessar and the son of Gloin already.  Stand by him, daughter.  Give him all your strength and all your love.  The four of you are all bound up in this threat that hangs above Gondor even now like the blade of a suspended sword.  But I foresee that if he has the three of you to guard his back and either side he may yet survive the doom fate has decreed for him.”

“Nothing could dissuade me to do less, my Lord,” Eowyn said.  Another swell of guilt rolled over her.  Thranduil would very likely hate her more than Morgoth himself when all was revealed.  But for the moment, he smiled on her. 

“Come,” he said, changing the subject with an audible sigh of relief. He took her arm paternally and guided her through the laundries.  “The women among my company have prepared a bath and fresh clothing for you.  Elessar asked that you be made presentable for your knighting.  There are no others who have suitable raiment after the fires and battles of the last two nights.” He sniffed arrogantly.  “My daughter in marriage shall not stand before the King of Gondor in blood-stained rags or the garb an Easterling heathen.”

“Presentable?” She asked, her brow creasing into a frown at his offhand slur upon the people of Rhunballa.

He only smiled haughtily in answer and ushered her into the custody of two Elvish women who emerged from the inner courtyard of the laundries.  They guided her to the open-aired basins to set to work upon her.     

It had been longer than she could remember since she had been attended or pampered in any way.  Rohan disdained the idea of ladies in waiting and the closest thing to a ladies’ maid she could remember was the governess who did little more than see she was clean and fed after her mother died.  One would never say such a thing before foreign ears, but the women of the North were of the opinion that a gaggle of ladies’ maids to look after her every need made for a rather useless lady.  Let the high ladies of Gondor call the women of Rohan wild and uncouth, Eowyn remembered her mother saying.  At least the Rohhiric noblewomen knew how to dress themselves unaided.

The two Elvish women soon gave Eowyn a new definition for the word ‘pampered’.  And the word ‘clean’.  And the word ‘presentable’.  They stripped her with friendly, unobtrusive efficiency and corralled her into a large basin tub they had filled with bubbling soap and sinisi petals.  They bathed her as she had not been bathed since her childhood nurse had passed away during her thirteenth winter, scrubbing with dainty little brushes under her fingernails and toenails.  They washed her hair first in a rinse of hot oil, then soft soap, then another type of oil that seemed to magically unknot every tangle.  Perhaps that was why she had rarely seen an Elf with mussed hair.  Better grooming tonics and soaps. But no, that was not true.  Legolas’ hair had been matted and supremely dishelved in the Nest, though it had seemed no less beautiful.

A soft, feminine chuckle sang in her ear.  “Your smile says you are day-dreaming of the Prince, cousin.”  And they gave her chorus of merry laughter when she blushed to the roots of her damp hair.

They toweled her hair and limbs dry and began to help her don what Thranduil had called ‘presentable’ raiment.  She gasped in soft wonder when she saw what they meant for her to wear.

“Your Eastern armor will never wear so well,” one of the Elvish women told her.  “It was fashioned for a man’s form.  This was designed with a woman’s body in mind.”

Eowyn stared at the glittering garb, humbled by the gift for she was certain that few queens of Rohan or even Gondor had worn anything so fair and---and valuable.  Over a blouse and breeches of while silk they slipped a mithril mesh shirt that fell about her frame as though it had been cut to her exact proportions, and with it were matching vambraces, ornately tooled with the patterns of autumn leaves and Elvish runes. 

She stood passive as a doll as they braided her hair into intricate designs, weaving silver ribbon through the weft of each coil.  When they were done she stared in shock at the stranger in the looking glass.  She looked like some mortal fosterling of an ancient Elvish realm, eerily beautiful and deadly as the gleaming sword at her hip.  Shard they had given a new sheath, a house of glittering mithril. 

A little sob caught in her throat and her eyes filled as it finally struck her what Aragorn must have meant when he asked that she be given fitting clothing.  This would not simply be a ceremony of oath-taking.  He meant to honor her as one would a great hero, probably before the entire City.  And that thought alone nearly sent her fleeing for the hills.

“Oh, my brave girl! Do not weep!”  Said one of the women in a kind, motherly tone, though her face appeared years younger than Eowyn’s.  She dabbed at Eowyn’s eyes with a damp cloth.  “We have won the day, and if all is not well, it shall be made so in time!”

Eowyn only shook her head, unable to put into words the emotions churning inside her heart.  A moment later, a quiet knock upon the courtyard door produced Gimli.  The two Elvish women took their leave, each leaving her with a light kiss on the cheek.

“My goodness!”  Gimli said after surveying her in silence a moment.  “Aren’t you shiny!”

“Do not make me laugh!”  Eowyn said weepily.  But she found herself smiling at the simple sight of his dear face nonetheless.

“What ails you, Lass?” He asked kindly.

“I cannot do this, Gimli!”  She said desperately.  “I cannot stand before these good people who have lost their homes and families and play the heroine!  I will not be---be honored or praised while half the City lies in ashes and half of the wounded from the first night’s attack are slain.  I will not be lauded when Fallah has lost all her family in the world, when Indassa lies dead, and Lord Hurin and Ikako and Somal and---and---” She broke off with a jagged little sob.

“Here now!”  Gimli said with gruff kindness.  He sat her down on one of the blackwood benches that ringed the courtyard.  “There will be no great to do, Lass, no celebration.  There will be scarcely more than two dozen people present and only those you love best.”

“Truly?” She sniffled.  She suddenly felt a fool.  She wished she could sit and cry for a very long time, but Aragorn was most likely awaiting her arrival.  He must have sent Gimli to collect her.  She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

“Truly!” He said emphatically.  “You and your brother are reconciled, Lass.  The King is alive and this land is freed from the evil that had plagued it for millennia.  The Elf is alive and well and shall not depart across the sea.  He will live a long mortal life beside you and the two of you will have a dozen little tow-headed rascals to call me uncle!”  He smiled as she laughed weakly, squeezing her hands.  “We have lost those we love and that is the way of war.  A new danger lies ahead or us, but that is the way of the world.  All we can do is take the love and happiness we have been granted in this time an place and treasure it as the blessing that it is.”

She hugged him impulsively and sighed as he patted her hair.  “I do not know the Fosterling’s Oath,” she said worriedly.

“Aragorn said it will not matter,” he told her.

She stood and took a deep breath as the Dwarf climbed down off the bench that was just a tad too high for him to dismount easily.  “Let us go,” she said simply.

He led her through the steam rooms that faced Bright Street and back around into the soapery that looked down on the flowering summer fields of Hundred Springs.   The soap-makers had always paid children half a shekel for each bushel of wildflowers they picked, so there was an old, well worn trail leading up from the valley to the Laundries.   The soap-makers workroom was untouched by fire and smelled of a hundred years of brewing blooms.

They were gathered like guests at a wedding or a birth-naming.  Every surviving captain of every Watch House stood in full armor, flanking the path she was to walk like an honor guard.  On either side, she saw the faces of many others, though there were surely no more than three dozen in all.  Fallah and Thranduil stood side by side on her left, Eomer and Gambold were on the right.  Moussah and a the handful of men who had survived South Pass were here.  The young emperor’s face was cold and haughty, but his eyes were warm as she passed.  Suni stood tall and effortlessly regal, with Shaeri at her side.  And Legolas---Legolas was nowhere to be seen.  But then there was no more time to worry over that for she had reached the end of the human corridor and Aragorn was before her.  He smiled on her as she knelt, feeling awkward as a mummer thrust into a play he had not rehearsed. 

“Eowyn, Daughter of Eorl,” Aragorn said formally, his silk and whiskey voice carrying easily to every ear though he spoke softly.  “For a second time you have slain with your own hands that which would have rent our kingdom asunder.  Gondor is late in giving thanks.  With the blessing of your lord brother, I would ask you to accept the title of Knight Defender of Gondor under the auspices of the Fosterling’s Oath.  What say you, my Lady?”

“I will,” Eowyn said, hoping fervently her voice was not shaking.

“Wilt thou, Eowyn Eomund’s daughter, swear fealty and service to Gondor for a span of three years, to be released at the King’s pleasure or should the throne of Rohan fall to thee by way of untimely death?”

“I will,” Eowyn breathed.

The King unsheathed Anduril and held it before her, the blade in his hand.  “Lay your hands upon the hilt and repeat after me,” he whispered. 

She had to keep reminding herself to breathe as she repeated the oath verbatim, as each stanza took hold in her heart and became a tangible, living thing.  To speak and be silent, to come and go, in need and plenty, in peace or war, in living or dying…

A shaft of light caught the blade of Anduril and it gleamed like liquid silver as Aragorn reversed the sword and lay the blade upon her shoulder.  “Then rise, Eowyn, Knight of Gondor.”

The words resounded eerily in her head as though some vital piece of an intricate puzzle puzzle had just fallen into place.  This was another link in the chain of Earendil’s prophesy, she thought with a chill.  The prophesy to which she was now irrevocably shackled.  Yet she stood, smiling bravely, seeing the answering flicker of unease in Aragorn’s eyes.  Whatever had just passed he had felt it, too.

Take the love and happiness you have been granted in this moment, Gimli had said.  Surely a wiser Dwarf never walked the earth.  So, she smiled and took the hands of her friends, embracing each of them in turn.  She would take all the joy she could glean from each moment and face the dangers ahead when the hour of reckoning was upon her.  As all those assembled began to depart to see to this task or that in preparation for the morrow, Shaeri drew Eowyn aside, her eyes bright with mischief.

“Do you remember the luxurious little hunting cabin my father built at the fork of Rising Fawn Spring?  It is half an hour’s ride from the City.”

“I remember,” Eowyn said.

“You Elf Prince awaits you there,” Shaeri said, smiling wickedly.

Eowyn smiled and her heart skipped a beat.  She left behind care and the weight of the thousand things that needed doing.  She rode through the slanting afternoon sunlight and it seemed the wind sang beneath her horse’s

hooves.  She came to the doorstep of the little cabin, finding it with little trouble, and wondered absurdly if she should knock.

She lifted the latch and entered the cabin almost hesitantly.  It housed a single room with wide windows that faced each point of the compass, all now open to the encircling forest.  And why not?  There was no longer any need to fear the night in Rhunballa.  At the center of the cabin room was a stone heart pit.  Something that smelled heavenly, an intoxicating stew of sweet and savory, of spice and sugars, was brewing over the little fire.  Legolas knelt beside the hearth, upon the soft furs and cushions strewn about the floor.  He was removing a tankard from the flame’s heat and glanced up at her as approached.

“Have you ever tasted mulled Elvish wine, Eowyn?” He asked with a hint of a smile.

“No,” she said.  She sat beside him, obediently accepting the cup of wine he poured her.  It was sweet and heady and it tasted of red berries brewed with honey.  She watched in bemused silence as he removed the kettle of food from the fire, setting it on the hearth’s stone rim to cool.

“I thought we might have an early supper,” he said, stirring the stew once before giving her his full attention.

They sat in silence a moment, each facing the other.  “I must leave with my father in the morning,” he said quietly.

“He told me,” she said.

He frowned faintly.  “I am sorry you did not hear it from me.  It was not my father’s place to tell you that, but I beg you to forgive him.  He is hurting terribly right now.  And---and when we are in Mirkwood, I must increase his pain a thousand fold.”  He sighed and bowed his head.  “I must return home with him and tell him all.  And I must stay with him after I deliver this terrible blow to be sure his grief does not overcome him.”

“You need explain none of this to me, Legolas!” She said, her heart twisting as she imagined, unwillingly, what Thranduil’s reaction would be on learning of Legolas’ choice.  “I do not regret anything that has passed between us.  But I am sorry to be the cause---”

“You are not the cause!” He said emphatically.  “I will not have you blame yourself and carry the guilt of my father’s grief on your head.  That burden is mine alone.  Had you and I never met, meleth-nin, still I would have chosen the mortal path.  When the Sea Longing took hold me near the end of the War, I was at first swept up in the euphoria of the Call to cross over the Valinor.  But within a few short months, the Longing began to seem to me a kidnapper that had stolen me away from all I had ever loved.  It came to me that I had fought with all my might to save Middle Earth from Sauron…and lost it for myself.  I do not wish to be parted from this world or from my friends that I love.  And the hard, cold truth that will not be lost on my father is that I have chosen this world and my friends over---over him.”  His eyes were suddenly full of tears.  “I cannot find words to make it sound less cruel, Eowyn!”

She leaned forward and put her arms around him.  The raw sorrow in his voice tore at her heart.  And there was no way to make it better for him.  This gift of the gods was bittersweet indeed, for every dram of its joy was balanced with an equal weight of grief.  He lay his head on her shoulder, taking silent comfort in her embrace.  “When do you leave Rhunballa?” He asked after a short silence.

“Before Harvestide,” she said.  “I must stay a while and help them rebuild and prepare for winter.”

“I will come to you in Minas Tirith by Mid-winter,” he swore.  He drew back and smiled though his eyes were still damp.  “If you will have me, I will wed with you then in the mortal fashion as quickly as your kin may be summoned.”

“Yes,” she said softly, smiling.  Her chest felt too full, as though it might burst from joy alone.  Gone was the crippling hesitation of doubt, gone was her fear of the sudden, overwhelming birth their love.  It was real.  It was true.  She would love him and leave fear to the faint-hearted.  Whatever peril lay before them, they would face it and defeat it and live to see many happy years thereafter.  The gods could not be so cruel as to give her the gift of his love and then snatch it away.  “Yes!” She said again and kissed him.

They ate in leisurely companionship and he somehow managed to divest her of her armor and regalia one surreptitious bit at a time by the time she was finished eating.  Before the wine was gone she found herself bare as the day she was born, though she could not say how he had contrived this.  Elvish magic, no doubt.  Though the mulled wine might have aided him in some small fashion.   Smiling, her head humming happily, she stripped him with delicious, slow deliberation until there was no barrier between his naked skin and hers.

“It has not been three days since I held you last,” Legolas murmured as they lay side by side, content for the moment to simply hold and be held.  “But already, I ache for you, meleth-nin---heart and body.  I do not know how I will bear long months without you.”

Her lips trembled like a child’s at the thought, but she thrust it aside.  She would not let sorrow intrude upon this night.  “It will be all the sweeter when we are reunited.”

“Aye,” he said softly, stroking her hair.  His hand paused, as though a stray thought had frozen him in place.  “Your brother will be angry with me in the morning.  He told me today that should I lay with you again before we are decently wed---though ‘lay’ was not precisely the word he used---that he would wring my pretty Elvish neck.”  Eowyn felt her smile begin to slide away to an angry frown, but he kissed her mouth softly.  “I do not wish to offend him or besmirch your honor in the eyes of your people.  When I come to Minas Tirith, let us save our love until the wedding night.  As you say, a little wait will make our next reunion all the sweeter.  And after, we need not be parted for all that remains of our lives.”

Something in that turn of phrase struck her as odd and her soft, happy smile wavered again.  “Does it seem very short to you---the prospect of one mortal life?  Does it seem to you as it would to me if I knew I would grow old and die within a year?”

He was silent, considering her question.  “Yes and no,” he said finally.  “Do you remember when you were small, how a week seemed to last an age and a year was an eternity?”  She nodded.  “For each year you live, your perception of the passage of time alters in proportion to the amount of time you have known.  So, in one sense, the idea of only a hundred fifty years, perhaps two hundred, seems heart-breaking in its brevity.  But the other side of the coin is that I have lived entire centuries where absolutely nothing of note happened.”

She stared at him and he laughed at her doubtful expression.

“Among my people,” he said,  “I trained with bow and blade, I laughed and sang beneath the trees, I ate and bathed and dreamed, I fought and guarded our borders from the Shadow of Dol Guldur and the horror that slept in the belly of the Lonely Mountain.  But decades bleed together in my memory in this fashion.  We can rouse to swift action in an instant when danger is nigh, but lacking immediacy, the life of Elves moves in slow motion.  Our speech, our gestures, our…everything slow to the movements of sleepwalkers. Our debates over such mundane matters as whether to build an apiary on one side of a glen or another can last for scores of years.  For what need is there to hurry?  I will tell you the deepest reason I would be mortal, Eowyn.  When I befriended Aragorn a second time, I rode for a year or more with he and his kinsmen, through town and village vale, all the way to the plains of Rohan, in fact.  The reason for our journey and the tale thereof is a lengthy one and I will not tell it tonight.  But by the end of our quest, I had fallen hopelessly, helplessly in love with mortal kind.  Among your folk, every day matters, every breath is savored.  And when I have been among you, my perception of time shifts, and I can, in a fashion, revel in each second, each beat of my heart, as you do.  I want to live my life with you in this manner, fierce and joyous and all the sweeter because it shall end.”

She smiled at him, gazing into eyes that were older than the House of Eorl in the face of a boy of twenty.  She kissed him as though she could gift to him the sighing song of love that swept through her.  Somehow he seemed to hear it, feel it, though perhaps it was only his heart echoing hers.  They melted into each other’s arms, worshipping with hands and mouth and body, and the love that strained at the physical cage of their souls found it sweetest expression in flesh.  She cried out at the end of love as though her heart would burst, gazing up into his eyes, watching his face as the wave of pleasure swept him up on its crest a moment later.  He sighed her name breathlessly, lying above and within her, his strong heart hammering against hers.  After a long moment, he seemed to regain the breath to speak and laughed softly.

“Have I waited long enough?”

“For what?” She asked, trailing fingers down the smooth line of his bare back.  He shuddered happily and moved against her once more so that she gasped with pleasure.

“It---I---” And incredibly, he began to blush.  “I have been among Men and listened to their talk.  I know mortals must wait a space of time between love-making, but I do not know how long I should---”

He broke off as she began to laugh in a manner that sounded suspiciously like a giggle even to her own ears.  “It is mortal men that must wait a space of time,” Eowyn said.  “To recover their strength, I suppose.  Women have no such limitations.”

He grinned sheepishly, but his eyes were warming with renewed desire.  “Nor do Elves,” he said.  He began to laugh softly then.  “Now, I feel a fool.”

“Never,” she said firmly, kissing him soundly.

“So much to learn,” he murmured thoughtfully, running his fingers up the line of her body to thread them through her sweat-damp hair.  “While I am home, I will commission a copy of the Melmaenas for us.  It is an instructional text for betrothed couples.”

She frowned, a little put out.  “You think we need instruction?”

“I think,” he said with a slow smile, “that there is much I do not know and never cared to learn until now.  Young Elves are given tutelage in the basic mechanics and forms of love before they reach physical maturity.  I vaguely remember the lecture was greeted with a certain amount of giggling on the part of my peers and myself, but there was a great deal of yawning as well.

We find the subject dull and uninteresting until heart’s love awakens desire in our bodies.  The Melmaenas is a gleaning of millennia upon millennia of accrued knowledge on every way imaginable to please one’s mate.  I thought we might pour over the text together when I come to Gondor.”  He was moving within her now, very, very slowly, as he spoke, turning whatever coherent reply she might have phrased into a jumbled disarray of pleasurable thought.  “It is a lengthy, complex tome,” he breathed.  “We would have to be vigorous in our studies.”

“And perhaps put these---these lessons into practice to be sure we understand them aright?” She laughed through the happy fog that was quickly enveloping her poor mortal brain.  “What is a form?” She gasped.

He smiled, his eyes avidly watching her face as she tried valiantly to focus on his words.  “This is a form.  With me above and you beneath.  I think this must be most common among mortals.”  She made a high, un-warriorlike noise of surprise as he scooped her up and rolled them so that she was now above him.  “And this is a form,” he grinned up at her.  “This is most common among my people.  We have tried one or two others, you and I, but there are many, many more.  There are also scores of techniques of touch and pressure and---” She leaned down and stopped his words with her mouth.  They did not speak again until much later in the night.

She woke in the cool, pre-dawn, chilled to the bone.  Something, some sable-winged specter of doom, had brushed her by as she slept, caressing the guarded borders of her mind with icy fingers.  Legolas caught her as she bolted up with a harsh cry.  He wrapped her in his warm arms when she would have shivered away with a half-waking moan of fear. 

“It is gone, meleth-nin!” He said gently.  “It is gone now!  What did you see in your dream?”

“Did you---?”  She shook her head, shuddering lightly.  Whatever it had been, the memory was already fading quickly.  “Did you sense something also?”

“Aye,” he said softly, his face troubled in the half-light of the hearth’s dying coals.  “Something…something dark was seeking us from afar.  It is gone now.”

She lay her head against his chest, wanting to rail at the heavens suddenly.  “I do not want you to---to do whatever it is Earendil said you are supposed to do!  I want it to go away and leave us in peace!”  She knew she sounded like a child, but she did not care.  “I do not want to lose you,” she said in a softly, her voice hollow with dread.

“You will not!” He said fiercely.  “Whatever comes to pass, whether we are slain or live happily to old age surrounded by dozens of grandchildren, we shall be together in the summerland where mortal souls---”

“No!” She cried angrily.  “I do not want to be reunited in the land of Hereafter!  I want you in this life!”  And she wept then, shedding all her pent up tears of fear, all she had held in through the nightmare of the last few days, squeezing her eyes shut against the image of Legolas hanging impaled upon the Huntress’ claw.

A long while later, she lay in his arms, all cried out as her mother would have said, tracing invisible patterns on his bare chest. 

“We must go back to the City soon,” he said unnecessarily.  “My father will want to leave at first light.”

“I will say farewell here,” she said softly.  “I do not wish to watch you ride away.”

He buried his face in her hair, breathing in her scent as though he meant to make a memory to last until Mid-winter.  “I love you, Eowyn.  I know I sound like a songbird, repeating the same strain over and over.  But I cannot say it enough to give voice to what I feel.  Believe that.  Believe that the Valar are loving and just and will not see us parted untimely in this life.”

“I will,” she said.  She smiled and his sorrowful face brightened.  She could weep again when he was gone, but she would not let him carry the image of her tears with him to Mirkwood.  “I love you,” she said with a smile that belied the ache in her heart.  “And I will see you soon.”

After he was gone, she wept again, for a very long time.  She sat long in thought after the Sun rose on the new day.  At midday, she rose and washed her face and let Windfola carry her back across the water-logged fields.  As she drew near the City, she began to hear a tap-tap like the sound of hundreds of wood-peckers.  Hammers, she thought with a small smile.  She quickened her mount’s pace and rode to help her friends rebuild their City.  There was much to do.

Epilogue

Once more I leave my home behind and ride to an uncertain future.  But it is immeasurably different this time.  I am returning to all I have known, not fleeing.  I will face the demons within and without and, by the Valar’s grace, defeat them.  I will face the whispers and knowing smirks of the Gondorhim as well.  For me, that is more daunting that a host of Hunters.  But like the monsters, it will hound me until I confront it head-on. 

I feel a constant tug on my heart, the bright place in my soul where Legolas now dwells.  I imagine I can sense his smile as his thoughts turn to me, even two hundred leagues away.

The days have grown cooler and the harvest moon hangs bright and full in the night sky.  Like a summer bird, I am filled with the restless, instinctive sense that it is time to depart.  But I shall not journey alone.  Gimli son of Gloin stayed behind when Aragorn and Legolas departed, ostensibly to help the Rhunballani rebuild.  He has been invaluable, over-seeing the resurrection of structures that would have taken thrice the time to complete without his skill.  But, in truth, I think he stayed at Legolas’ behest, to bolster my spirits.  If that was his mission, he had succeeded, for his warm, good humor and steady presence have been a constant comfort to me and to Fallah as well.

Fallah will come with us tomorrow.  At first, she told me she had asked and been granted leave by Aragorn to study in the Houses of Healing in Minas Tirith.  Though I think she truly only wishes to learn all Aragorn will teach her.  I imagine she will show the Healers of Gondor a trick or two they have not seem before.  Or as Gimli put it, “She will fright the skullcaps off of them!”  She will learn all she can and give back new knowledge in equal measure.  But she has told me there are other reasons to leave.  Fallah does not forget her oath to Lord Hurin, and she says she will serve the people of Minas Tirith until she has saved as many lives as her skylighters took in the fiasco as South Pass. 

“Rhunballa,” she told me last night, “is haunted for me, though all its monsters be slain.  Everywhere I turn I see a ghost.  My family is gone, Eowyn, and too many of my friends.  I must leave this land, at least for a while, or die of grief.”

And to that, I can offer no comfort other than my friendship.  Only time and distance will close some wounds.  I know that better than most.  The three of us will journey together.  Though perhaps I should say the four of us.  I am not sure.

Last night, I sat up late with my friends.  I drank my fill of wine, something I rarely do.  I listened to Suni speak of her eldest son’s new antipathy for the word ‘prince’.  It has caused the mothers of some of his rough and tumble playmates to forbid rough housing with Aram for fear of bruising or scraping the heir to the throne.

Shaeri consented to be firstwife to Moussah only under the condition that she remain in Rhunballa.  She will not go to Harad, and that, I think, shall be the salvation of their marriage.  They officially consummated their union after a loud, drunken festival during which Harad’s new Emperor told me rather tipsily that he and Aragorn had tacitly agreed that neither should lay claim to Rhunballa.  It would, with Suni’s leave, become a neutral ground to discuss matters of state between Gondor and Harad when negotiation at the point of a sword seemed inappropriate.

“It is, after all, a no man’s land,” Moussah said with a perfectly straight face.

My jaw did not drop open, but it was a near thing.  The Emperor of Near and Far Harad, the Scourge of the West, Lord of the Servants of Mordor, High Priest of the Black Order of Morgoth, had not merely made a joke.  He had just made a very, very bad pun.  No more will I say anything is impossible.

As the conversation waned, I lay back beside the fire in Queen’s Guard commons and dreamed.  Or I think I dreamed.  I am not sure. In my dream, Morsul sat beside me, helping himself the last of the redberry wine.  He looked solid and real, very unlike the transparent shades men always describe in ghost tales.  But as I sat up and watched him sip the wine with slow relish, the fire caught him in such a way that I saw he cast no shadow.

He was an Elf once more.  Even dead, he shown in the faint light. His coal black hair was swept back from his forehead, bound in a single warrior’s braid that fell down his back.  He took another brown clay cup from the hearthside and filled it with the dregs of the wine.  Then he turned back and smiled at me wickedly.

“I have been summarily ejected from Mandos’ Halls,” he said.  He handed me the wine cup and I took it, wondering how a shade could lift a solid object in the first place. “Apparently, He has had no traffic with a soul as tarnished as mine in some time.”

“How could the god of death spurn a dead soul?” I asked softly.  “Especially one who sought redemption in the end?”

“He had not seen an Elf who willingly gave himself over to Darkness

since Maeglin of Gondolin darkened his doorstep,” Morsul murmured.  “I am unfit to Wait.  I am unfit to be reborn.  And yet, because of my repentance, I am also unfit to be cast into the Outer Darkness.  His judgement was that I return to Arda houseless, to make peace the hate and rage that still blacken my soul.  And to atone for millennia of murder and atrocity.  I am to aid you and my Lord Dior’s great-grandson in your struggle against the Stormbringer.”

“The Stormbringer,” I repeated and shivered.  And suddenly, the full meaning of his words struck me.  “You are to---no!  NO!  You will not---” I searched for a kinder word but could not find one, “---haunt me!  I will not allow it!”

But he only laughed.  The sound echoed strangely in my head, as though it were rebounding inside the corridors of some giant cavern room.  “Is that any way to speak to a warrior who nobly laid down his life for you?”

“You were already dead!”  I nearly shouted.  It was one thing to remember him with pity and sigh sadly for all that he had lost and all that had been ruined by Simiasha’s foulness.  It was more difficult to think kindly of him and mourn his tragic fate when he sat smirking before me, somehow solid and insubstantial at the same time.

“Do not frown so, love!” He said, watching with amusement as I ground my teeth.  “We are on a great adventure, you and I!  I will guard you and hover o’er your every more.  I have done so since the moment you slew Thuringwethil." He smiled lovingly, watching with dark mischief in his silver eyes as my face turned red as a rose in bloom. 

“You---!” I hissed in utter horror.  “You have been at my side without cease since---” I stopped speaking.

“Yes, indeed,” he said slyly.  He frowned thoughtfully.  “All in all, I thought you and your Legolas performed rather admirably, even without the aid of the Melmaenas to---” I uttered some unintelligible oath and lobbed my cup of wine at him.  It passed through him and shattered on the hearth.

His mirth faded then, as though blown away by a sudden wind.  He eyed me, sober and serious as a hangman.  He reached forward and took my hand.  His flesh was solid now, neither warm nor cold.  I froze, too shocked to react at all.

“Hear me,” he said solemnly.  “My true name is Laersul son of Olwe.  I will serve you and Elured’s grandson to the end of my strength and beyond.  You have but to call my name, dearest, and I will come.”

And he was gone.

I woke just before dawn, a little amused by the odd path my dreams had taken.  As I searched for my boots in the dark, I pricked my finger on a sharp fragment of broken pottery.  The cup I had hurled at Morsul in my dream lay scattered in broken pieces around the edge of the hearth.

I have decided I will not dwell on the possibility of divinely sanctioned hauntings unless Morsul---or Laersul---shows himself to me in the waking light of day.  If I do, I may never bathe again for fear of the watchful laughing eyes of voyeuristic Elf spirits.

It is past dawn.  Windfola is saddled and the jenny mules are laden with all we mean to carry with us to Gondor.  I have said my farewells to those I love.  I hear, even now, Master Gimli asking Fallah if there is anything in her bags that will blow us sky high if it is laid near the fire tonight.

It is time to go.  I will brave this new danger and the noble folk of Gondor with as much courage as I can muster, though I would rather face a host of sword-wielding enemies than a single snickering courtier.  I will aid my beloved in every way against this unknown threat that seems to be his burden.  I will do all in my power to protect my King and his realm against the new enemy.  I will dream of Legolas and pine for Mid-winter’s Eve like a sighing lovesick maid.  My body is still tainted with darkness, but my heart is whole and strong again.  I will go forward, not unafraid, but unbowed by fear, to face whatever the future holds.

End

Author's notes:

Well, as you can see, this is the end of one story and the beginning of another. The next fic in this series will be called "Knight of Gondor".  It may be a little while before I am able to begin it in earnest, but be patient and it will come. I thank you all collectively for your support and encouraging words for my first LOTR fic. Drop me a email if you want:

erin_lasgalen@yahoo.com