Disclaimer: I don’t own them and I’ll put them back when I’m done!

Author’s Note: School’s out! I hope to finish this poor fic this summer, since it’s been going on for nearly two years this October. Bear with me; we’re almost finished now.

Chapter Twenty-One: Found

     It was dark and quiet in the corridors. She was walking through the walls, silent and watchful, looking for the woman who had looked. Things had changed since she had been locked in her room, since she had been exiled to the mirrors. The wing that had once been so full of people and light was now quiet, dead. There was no one here. She wandered from wall to wall, mirror to mirror, looking, searching.

     Why was it so quiet? Where had all the people gone? They must be coming back soon; there was still food on the tables and flowers in the vases. But the food was old, rotten, and the flowers were brown and dead. The quiet cold of the empty wing had killed them all.

     Then why had the lady who looked been there? And something had been wrong with her. She had been afraid. Why? She had looked; didn’t she understand that this was a good thing? What had happened to her? She had been watching; the lady had collapsed and been very ill. Perhaps she had injured herself; there had been lots of blood. But she had not died. She would know if the lady had died.

     This was her domain. She could not leave the empty wing, could not go past the old portrait gallery. That was not her domain. That was the domain of another, who had her own problems to solve. Still, at least she was able to wander her domain. She could not imagine being trapped in a single gallery for so many years.

     The mirror. The looking mirror that the lady had picked up and dropped. It was gone. It had been on her floor, but now it was gone. She did not remember where it was gone, although she had the vague memory of dizziness. That was the way of it here. Sometimes she slept for weeks, years. Things happened when she slept that she did not catch until later. That was why so much time had passed. She supposed that was what had happened when the mirror was taken. But it had been the opening of the mirror that had woken her when the woman came into the room. She did not understand. She could not remember properly, exactly what had happened. But she knew that wherever the mirror went, so would she. She was bound to it.

     Oh, but she was tired. So tired. Always tired, even after she had been asleep for so long. Why must she be trapped in the walls, always wandering? She did not like it.

     And then there were the others in the mirrors, those hidden in the dark places. She avoided them studiously, though she had sought out their company at first. She did not trust them; they wanted to do horrible things to the living ones. It had been them, she knew, that had so frightened the lady who looked. They had made her ill. They had tried to hurt the lady so that she could not help her.

     At that thought, a wave of anger swept through her. How dare they try to hurt the lady! How dare they try to destroy everything! How dare they make it so difficult for her to escape this terrible waiting, to deny her entry into the bright place, into Mandos’ halls? She had to find the lady. She had to. Everything hinged upon her doing so.

     And so she walked, flitting from wall to wall and mirror to mirror. She had to find the lady. She had to.

     And as she walked, she began to remember.

     Her father had thrown her into her chambers and slammed the door shut in her face. “You will stay in here until you come to your senses! How dare you put your own petty desires before the good of this country, Alatarial! You will stay in there!”

     She had hurled herself at the door, screaming, all dignity forgotten in her horror. “Father! No! Come back, I’ll listen! Don’t you know what he is, Father?!”

     But her father had gone. Alatarial had screamed and beat at the door frantically, beat and kicked at it in terror until she collapsed to the floor in a sobbing heap. Hours had passed, and no one answered her pleading cries. No one had come. She had eaten a little of the food left in the basket on her table, drunk a little of the water. And still no one had come. There was only silence outside her chambers.

     Days had passed. She had had very little food, and so had tried her best to conserve it, hoping that someone would come and release her.

     After three days, her supply of food had run out. There was nothing left of it. The water lasted a few days longer, but in the end, that had disappeared, too.

     After a week, she had written a farewell note and hidden it in the under drawers of her doll. Maybe someone would find it someday. She had hoped so.

     After two weeks, she had become too weak from hunger to do anything but lie in her bed, clutching her doll. The door bore signs of her escape attempts: scuffs and scratches marred it, but the strong oak had held firm. There had been no escape from this fate.

     Alatarial had become wooly-headed from lack of food, no longer angry but apathetic. Her stomach was constantly cramped and her tongue was heavy in her mouth. It became difficult to see and hear, and so she did not try. She had merely lain in her bed and waited for whatever outcome would take her. She had ceased being afraid long ago.

     She was not sure, really, when death took her. She did remember when her body finally gave out, relinquishing its hold on her with a soft popping sound. She had sat up and looked around, prepared to fly off into death and peace. And she had started to, but she had been sent back. She had to fix it, had to stop the evil work begun by the mirrors of Seregon. She did not know how she was to do this, but she had to.

     And so, Alatarial sat on the bed that she had once slept in and kept watch over her pale, wasted body. The girl in the bed was just a child, with lank hair and white skin. She lay in the bed for a long time, unmoving, and Alatarial had waited. At last, after a day or so, someone came and finally opened the door. Servants came in, carrying winding sheets and baskets, and they had silently stripped her body from its bed and wrapped it up. Perhaps, Alatarial thought, they were morbidly amused by the dress she had chosen to wear to die in: a fine red gown of the softest silk, edged in pale gold. It had fit her once, before she lost all of the meat on her bones. It had hung like a sheet from her starved body when they pulled her from the bed.

     Alatarial had watched dispassionately as the servants wrapped her body in a shroud and carried it away for burial. They were not the ones she had needed to speak to about the mirrors. She had had no idea who she ought to seek out, but had known that she would know when they came to her. And so she waited.

     And then the lady had come! She came, and she looked, and Alatarial knew that she could tell her how to defeat the mirrors. But the lady had run in terror, and had been hurt. And so Alatarial had to find her. Had to tell her.

     When she finally found the lady, it was to experience a disappointment so great that it almost destroyed her ability to communicate. The lady was dying.

     After witnessing the pain she was in, Alatarial hurled herself into her mirror, which hung in a corner of the lady’s private sitting room, and sat weeping. The lady died, and Alatarial sank into a vague stupor as the room was shut up and left to collect dust and mourn the happiness that had once been found there. The events of the outside world meant nothing to her. For Alatarial, there was only despair. Until the day that the lady’s son brought another lady to the sitting room. And there, this new lady picked up the book that the other lady had taken from Alatarial’s room. And Alatarial shook herself from her stupor and set about making plans.

*****

     “I need to go to your mother’s sitting room again, Faramir,” Eowyn said.

     Faramir frowned, looking understandably perplexed. “I told you that you could go there whenever you wished to, Eowyn. You don’t need to ask my permission.”

     “Faramir is learning that rigid Gondorian formalities are not always necessary, my dear,” Arwen said cheekily. She was the only one able to maintain a slight cheekiness in the face of such gravity. Perhaps it was in part because she was an Elf.

     “You have the key,” Eowyn replied calmly.

     Faramir made a face and handed her the keys he carried on him as Steward. “It’s the small gold one, my love. May I ask what’s going on?”

     Aragorn smiled slightly at his bewildered Steward. “The ladies have discovered that the mirrors are alive and out to kill us all. Nothing much, other than that.”

     Faramir blinked, and stood. There were some things it was better not to ask too many questions about, and if Aragorn stated that the mirrors were deadly, then the mirrors were deadly. “Right then,” he said. “Come with me.”

*****

     Finduilas’ sitting room was cold, but none of them minded it as they looked around for Alatarial’s mirror. By the light of their candles they searched, peering into the darkest corners in search of it.

     It was Pippin who found the mirror, hanging in a far corner of the room, a corner black with shadows. He called his friends over, and they stood looking at the closed leaves over the glass.

     “Someone should open it,” he said.

     Eowyn stepped forward and reached for the painted panels that covered the glass. “I will. It was me who got us into this mess.”

     Merry snorted. “I believe that’s negotiable, my lady. I argue that it was Pippin.”

     Pippin swatted his cousin, and a general chuckle ran throughout the small group. Grinning, Eowyn opened the panels. And the smiles faded as they watched a scene unfold before their eyes.

     It was a scene that they had heard of before: the history of the mirror. It showed the mirror being made in a distant Haradric workshop, being shipped to Belfalas, falling into Seregon’s hands. It showed the murder of Illyria in the portrait gallery. An argument between Seregon and Belecthor. And finally, it showed the death of Alatarial.

     But this was not all. It showed a woman jumping from a wall-the same whose shade they had seen at the masquerade. It showed a dark haired woman peering into it, again and again. Finduilas. And at last she spoke, as the others had shouted, argued, screamed and cried.

     “This is but the smaller mirror, and it beholds great evil. But the greater mirror is the one which binds the shades of the evil to this world, allowing them to come again to wreak havoc and fear on those living. I pray whoever looks into this mirror destroys the other two. One I have found but been too weak to destroy. It is in a secret room in the empty wing. The other I have not found as yet. I do not think I will find it, in truth, for I am weak and nearing the end of my life. But they must all be destroyed.”

     Then the mirror showed nothing but the reflections of those staring at it.

     “Well,” Eowyn said after a moment’s silence. “There it is, then.”

TBC