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Sons of Fellowship  by Conquistadora

“Come on, lad.  You won’t see much if you stand just there all day.”


Gimli stood in the cavernous entryway behind Helm’s Deep, torch in hand, waiting more or less patiently for Legolas to overcome his reticence to enter there.  He had seen and even endured the Elf’s mad free-running antics on horseback which were proof enough in itself that Legolas was no coward, and Gimli now had eyes to see that the Elvish aversion to deep places was indeed very real.  It was not merely a dislike or a preference, but a natural and innate fear.  If anything could explain the Dwarf’s new coaxing attitude, it was regret for his blind taunting in Moria, for if Legolas was so reluctant to enter the Glittering Caves of his own will -- called Aglarond in his own tongue, as he said, Place of Glory -- then with what strength of heart had he dared to pass with them the dread and moldering paths of the Black Abyss?


Legolas had balked quite unintentionally at the cave’s mouth.  He had fully intended to go on and make no issue of it, but the morning sun and the light birdsong seemed keen on dissuading him from passing into the dark on such a beautiful day.  But still, he reproached himself for entertaining such weakened thoughts now.  Had he passed through Moria and the Paths of the Dead only to disappoint Gimli here in times of peace, when this plainly meant so very much to him?  And besides, no son of Thranduil went back upon his given word, and to enter here he had promised.


It was foolish really, he told himself – his reluctance.  What could possibly befall them here?  No, perhaps it was not best to dwell upon that.


Drawing a deep breath, he turned his back upon the sunlit world and entered that which only a flickering torch revealed, furtively, like a cat slinking beneath a bed.


“That’s more like it,” Gimli said, handing him a torch of his own.  “Follow me and I’ll show you another wonder of the Northern World!”  With that he tramped on through darkened corridors ahead, and Legolas had no choice but to follow or risk losing him.


The first chambers were unimpressive enough, the only ones in use by the garrison at Helm’s Deep.  They still smelled of hay and dust, men and horses.  But still they seemed untamed, still wild and unexploited.  The Rohirrim had used them as they found them, without thought of setting chisel to the walls save to widen doorways.


“Come!” Gimli called ahead of him, his voice echoing in the emptiness.  “There is naught to see here.  All lies beyond!”


Legolas followed obligingly; Gimli’s enthusiasm could not be refused, and he trusted him to find the way back once he had taken him to the bowels of the earth and beyond.


They passed through several other chambers, closer and less inviting than those they had already seen, devoid of living echoes, for few men had bothered to venture this far.  To Legolas’ mind they seemed dead, cold, brooding, utterly unattractive, and as the passage narrowed his heart seemed to constrict along with it.  The torchlight flickered and danced along the close walls, seeming almost to sway on either side of him to suggest the illusion of drowning.


Gimli squeezed through a fissure in the wall, grumbling that as Lord of Aglarond he would be certain to have a more accommodating front door.  Despite his admonition, Legolas did close his eyes as he twisted through the same excuse for a passage.  But as he lightly set foot into the chamber beyond, already he felt relieved, knowing it was larger and more spacious than what lay behind.


“Behold!” Gimli said, his voice resounding distantly.  “The Caverns of Helm’s Deep!”


At last Legolas dared to open his eyes, and was indeed awestricken in spite of himself.  Not even Gimli’s glowing tribute had done the place complete justice.  By the feeble torchlight he saw gargantuan halls open before them, supported by enormous living pillars of unearthly colors, all glimmering with the hint of rich ore and gems.  It was perhaps a majestic caricature of Thranduil’s Halls, by far larger and grander with a raw and wild spirit.  The floor was still studded with glistening stalagmites, their brethren reaching down from the ceiling far above them.


Gimli stood silent as he observed with satisfaction Legolas’ slack-jawed reaction to the wonders that had won his heart.  “Pay gold to be excused, would you?” he jibed gently.  “What say you now, Legolas?  Do you not love them as I do?”


“I will freely admit I was wrong to scorn them at first,” Legolas said softly, unable to lower his eyes from the unimagined splendor standing in timeless array around him, or to raise his voice for fear of violating the place with echoes, “and I now understand and share your reverence for them.  But no, Gimli, I could never love them as you do.”


Gimli grunted.  “What can I say – Elves are strange folk.  But come, you have not seen the half of it all.”


They walked fa rther along the winding trail amid the stalagmites, at every turn meeting new and fantastic formations.  Legolas said nothing, respectfully leaving the silence undisturbed by any more than the tramp of the Dwarf and the dank dripping all about them.  


Gimli said nothing for a time as well, giving his friend a chance to take in the extraordinary sights in peace.  At length they passed a small pool, fed from a fissure in the wall, populated by an assorted bunch of colorless creatures who never saw the light of day. 


“Whence comes your dread of caverns?” he asked at last, as they moved on.  “Were you not born in one?”


“I most certainly was not,” Legolas replied.  “I was born in an autumn bower amid the limbs of a beech long before the Halls of Lasgalen were delved in the north.  I spent the merriest years of my life in our city amid the trees.  It was only in flight of the Shadow that we perforce took to a fortress beneath the ground.”


There seemed endless new chambers to discover and explore.  Gimli quite forgot the passage of time, and Legolas said nothing of it, for he had to admit the view was indescribable, and it had made a deep impression upon him.  After a long while of wandering through the dark, they at last sat down on a wide ledge overlooking a chasm and Gimli provided a light lunch, mostly leftovers saved from breakfast.  It did not last long between them, but it was better than nothing.  They sat there for a while afterward, for Gimli was not anxious to yet begin the journey back, savoring the view from the deepest point he had yet seen of his new realm.


“I am in your debt, Gimli,” Legolas said at last.  “I only hope it may lie within my power one day to repay you.”


“Think naught of it,” Gimli insisted.  “It was my pleasure to bring you here, you know that.  And you will be ever welcome here in afterdays.”


Legolas shook his head.  “I would that I could show you something of Elvendom that would touch you as you have here touched me.  But Lasgalen cannot vie with Lothlórien for beauty.  And I know of nothing that may complement what I have seen today of Aglarond, save perhaps the splendor that is said to endure in the Blessed Realm.”


Gimli grunted, and left Legolas to his thoughts.  That Elf could be dreadfully earnest at times.  He almost expected him to invite him to Valinor then, but that was of course ridiculous.


“My father would hold himself honored to see what I have seen,” Legolas continued, as though to himself.  “Perhaps it would remind him in some way of Menegroth, the home of his youth.”


“I have heard many things about your father,” Gimli said then, pricked with curiosity, “some darker than others.”  He glanced at Legolas guardedly, almost afraid to see the same scars behind his eyes that he had seen in Faramir.  He had noticed nothing of the kind before, but Legolas had hidden much from him.  “Tell me, is there any truth in them?”


Legolas thought a moment before he ventured to answer, drawing himself up straighter, his gaze distant.  “You live in halls of stone, Gimli,” he said.  “What becomes of an echo each time it is returned?  At first it is faithful, but afterward it soon weakens.  So also is truth weakened in the telling, becoming first rumor, then falsehood.  That is how you may regard whatever popular ghoul stories you have heard of my father.  True, he is unforgiving to those who make an enemy of him, but to his kin he is ever devoted.  To seek the truth of an Elvenking in the memory of Dwarf-lords is to seek a right reflection in crooked glass.  If enmity festers still between our fathers, then it is our place to remedy it, for old and pointless grievances profit us nothing.”


“True,” Gimli said, thoughtful himself.  “Without the friendship of Elves, never should I have seen the White Lady amid the Golden Wood.”


“And without the friendship of Dwarves,” Legolas smiled, “never should I have ventured in to behold the wonders of Aglarond.  Moria still holds none of my love, but I trust Erebor will not be so forbidding.  And I believe you will enjoy the hospitality of Lasgalen far more than your father did.”


“You do not expect your father to chain me in his dungeon for daring to fraternize with his son?”


“He will not, unless he would chain me with you in that storeroom your father names a dungeon.  But do not misjudge him, Gimli.  My father is a wise and noble king of fearsome authority, but no tyrant.”


“Sounds like my mother,” Gimli muttered. 

Legolas’ shoulders began shaking as he endeavored to smother some spontaneous laughter, perhaps imaging how Thranduil would appreciate the comparison. 


“Ah, Gimli,” he laughed, “my own mother would have been fond of you.  In truth you resemble my father in more ways than one.  You will understand one another well if you but try.”  But then he sobered and glanced about.  “Gimli,” he said, in calm monotone, “is it my eyes only, or it is the light failing us?”


Now fear did grip Gimli’s heart with an icy hand, as he realized in what desperate straits they now found themselves.  “Have we tarried so long already?”  He reached in vain for the replacement torches he did not have, then looked to the Elf somewhat sheepishly, who had gone rigid beside him.  “Care for a walk in the dark, Legolas?” he asked, just as the last light diminished and failed.


There was silence in the pitch blackness.  To judge the depth of his breathing, Gimli guessed Legolas was making a valiant effort to remain calm, when every instinct urged him to panic.


Dwarvish expletives came low and free.  “I swear I had them ere we left.  How in the name of all . . .” but then he stopped and sighed, recognizing the futility of self-reproach now.  “Well, shall we begin?”


“Do not move,” Legolas insisted, grabbing his shoulder.  “Give me a moment, I beg you.  Now is not the time to go blundering about blind.”


After a few more moments, he sighed and rose to his feet, Gimli beside him.  Legolas turned Gimli’s back to him and took hold of his shoulders.  “I know little of Dwarves,” he said, “but perhaps my eyes see more in the dark than yours, though there is indeed nothing to see.  However, I know near nothing of caves and their ways.  I shall be your eyes, and you will be my feet.”


They relied on one another that way during the long wearisome journey back.  Gimli led the way, feeling the ground instinctively while following Legolas’ vague but emphatic instructions regarding what lay ahead of them.  If anything, the experience impressed an even greater respect upon them for the surroundings, for never had they felt so insignificant, their senses sharpened by necessity, able to feel more acutely the looming grandeur all around them though it was lost to their eyes.  The black gloom was almost tangible in itself.  Gimli was amazed Legolas could sense anything at all, and therein lay the mysteries of elvish vision.


“You are not afraid, Legolas, that I shall lose us both to our deaths here?” he asked at length, almost conversationally, as they inched across a narrow natural bridge, unpleasantly reminiscent of Khazâd-dûm, the sound of water running far below.


“No,” Legolas said, his voice deliberately even, “because you will not.  I refuse to believe otherwise.”


Gimli grunted, appreciative of the Elf’s faith in him, but realizing that such optimism was the only way Legolas was able keep himself calm.  “Still,” he mused, “it would not be a bad place to die.  Think of it!  Entombed in greater glory than all our sires of old, buried forever inviolate beneath the world of the living, in halls of stone amid the timeless splendor of the netherworld!  An entire mountain against the sky for a monument!  Ah, it stirs the blood.”


“It chills mine,” Legolas returned through his teeth.  “Gimli, if you would have me come sane with you again into the sunlight, you will cease plucking upon my nerves.  And keep to the left, please.”


They continued to pick their way along through what seemed like hours.  All seemed very much the same, and Gimli regretted their lack of light if only because the glories of his realm were veiled from his eyes, making their return a dreary one.  By the grip on his shoulders, he knew Legolas was as nervous as a cat in a box, enjoying this perilous sojourn not in the least.  Still he trusted his Dwarvish friend implicitly, but after a long while of doubtful wandering Gimli regretted that he had to disappoint him.


“What time is it?” he asked.


“Perhaps mid-afternoon,” Legolas answered bleakly, a longing in his voice for the green fields of Rohan beneath the sun.  “Why?”


Gimli heaved a sigh, and broke away from Legolas’ grasp, sitting heavily upon an unseen rock after stumbling upon it.  “With any luck,” he said, “Aragorn may come looking for us before nightfall.  I’m afraid I’ve lost us indeed, Legolas.”


The Elf took it calmly, his form a vague outline in the blackness, bearing the slightest hint of an unnatural glow.  Gimli heard him sit on the floor at his feet, the soft rustle of his clothes mingled with a sigh of regret and resignation.  “I feared it was so,” he said quietly.


“I am sorry, lad,” Gimli said, sincerely.  “I suppose you regret now that ever I brought you here.”


A reply seemed on the tip of Legolas’ tongue, but he paused a moment.  “No,” he said.  “Even now I would not have had it otherwise.”


“How long would it take an Elf to starve?” Gimli asked, ever full of delightful questions.


“Longer than a Dwarf,” Legolas returned, with what Gimli sensed to be a cold smile.  “If we did not succumb to simple heartbreak first.”


They said nothing for a time, until the silence between them became painful.  Then Legolas rose again and slowly began pacing, his agitation building.  Gimli watched him as he could, feeling helpless.  If only he had a light!  Then wandering would not hold so much peril, and they may yet find their own way out.  He could have kicked himself for his carelessness.


Then Legolas stopped and began to sing.  Softly at first, as though only to himself.  In the past months, Gimli’s meager education in all things Elven had taught him that Legolas’ particular kindred of Elves was especially gifted musically, and to hear him Gimli agreed the distinction was justified.  There was nothing shrill or feminine about it, as Dwarves perhaps imagined the song of Elves if never they had heard it.  His words now Gimli did not know, but the tune was not the keening lament he had expected.  Rather it was strong but subdued, determined, one of Mirkwood's songs.


Presently he lent more force to his voice, heedless of all else.  Echoes were returned from all sides, resounding from the many shapes and hollows of the halls around them.  But rather than waiting for them to subside, Legolas built his song around them, so that soon he seemed to sing with ten voices, weaving together sounds that would have otherwise been in conflict, and Aglarond answered to him as strings to the hand of a harpist.


Gimli watched enthralled by Legolas’ endeavor, the singular vocal masterpiece he wrought, knowing he would never hear the like again.  The moment was made all the more precious for its brevity, for soon it would fade and be forgotten even as would be the whole of the Elven race, remembered only by the son of Glóin who had alone been privileged enough to witness it.  Whether Legolas realized it or not, in that moment his debt was repaid.


Legolas had awakened an aura about himself by his efforts, an Elvish luminescence Gimli had seen before though never so dramatically invoked, and soon he shone preternaturally bright and pale in the darkness.  He silenced his own voice, but it was long before the echoes died fully away, and in that time Legolas took close heed of them, of the way they were returned and where they were held longest.  At last he turned and took his friend by the wrist.


“Come!” 


Following his own light, which seemed only just enough for him, Legolas led Gimli across the floor of the massive chamber, weaving through the assortment of dark formations touched briefly by the pale Elvish glow as he passed.  When they reached the far wall, he began climbing an ascending rock pile like a deer, and Gimli found it a challenge to follow, though Legolas tarried now and again for safety’s sake.


“Where do you think you’re going, anyway?” Gimli demanded, as he huffed up the rockslide.


“I go to find the Sun,” Legolas said with a smile, repeating what he had said on Caradhras.  “As fair as your realm is, Gimli, she calls to me back to mine.  When you and yours have come and ensconced those lamps you spoke of before, then I should be pleased to return.”


When Gimli had at last hauled himself up to Legolas’ side, the Elf set about pulling the jagged stones away from the wall, letting them tumble down behind them.  Gimli held his tongue, knowing it foolish to gainsay an Elf when the homing instinct was upon him, and sure enough, Legolas had soon cleared the entrance to another dark fissure, one just large enough to pass through, perhaps.


“And how did you know that was there?” Gimli asked, intrigued.  “You said you knew nothing of caves and their ways.”


“I do not,” Legolas maintained, rubbing his hands free of dust.  “But do you smell that?”


“What?”  Gimli bent down next to the opening and sniffed experimentally.  “Ah!  Hay and sawdust!”


“Indeed,” Legolas said, pulling off his Lórien cloak and throwing it down before moving to slip through his makeshift passage himself.  It was a break near the ceiling in the chamber beyond, promising a lengthy drop from their height.  Even he had trouble getting through, held in limbo until he had performed some impressive writhing to free himself, then letting himself fall to land light as a cat below.


“Off with your belt, Gimli,” he called back.  “You will have trouble enough without it.”


Gimli admitted he could be right, and grumblingly unbuckled his belt, tossing it down to Legolas below.  Then also his helmet, and his cloak.  He dreaded this next, but it must be done.


Hesitantly he put his legs through the crevice, hanging over nothingness.  Relying on the strength of his arms alone, he twisted as he might to push his stout hips through, feeling very much like a square peg in a round hole.  When at last he slipped further, he set about pushing his middle through, his arms trembling with the strain, until at last the whole of him gave way entirely.  He fell with a shout, but landed heavily in Legolas’ waiting arms.  Crouched to employ the whole of his strength and save his back at the same time, Legolas caught him admirably, but was floored nonetheless.


Groaning, Gimli sat up to find himself sore and bruised, but cradled in Legolas’ lap.  The Elf’s face was screwed into a grimace, suffering a bruised backside for his trouble.  They limped to their feet, and Gimli gathered his articles that lay nearby.  It was still dark, but they were plainly in one of the first chambers.


Together they felt their way along the walls until they saw welcome sunlight spilling through the cave’s mouth, a beautiful sight now to the both of them.  Emerging into the open air once again, Legolas took a deep breath, savoring the green scent of summer.  He seemed a bit spent by his efforts, but was recovering rapidly.


Gimli shaded his eyes for a time, unused to the brightness.  He reflected on what had passed there beneath the mountain, on the moments he and Legolas has shared.  Amazed together, lost together, embarrassed together, each revealing what lay near his heart for the other to see and appreciate.  And now he wished to preserve that only between themselves.


“Don’t tell Aragorn,” he said with a grin.


Legolas smiled back at him, reading in his eyes the full purport of his request.  


“Not a word,” he agreed.











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