The eerie silence had broken by the time that Haleth reached the beach. The entire tribe was gathered around the game, cheering. Men were hurrying to place the tall rocks into position for the next round.

A shirtless Inglor and a wiry Lossoth were glaring at each other over two small piles of belongings. With a shock Haleth realised that Inglor's sword and most of his possessions were in the stack before him. The elf had somehow managed to do something she had never anticipated; he had lost.

The crowd fell silent as elf and man looked daggers at each other. Inglor suddenly leapt gracefully onto his heap of worldly goods. The Lossoth cheered wildly, Haleth's new friend and the young women were by far the loudest. 

Inglor was wagering himself. Haleth almost swallowed her tongue.

The crowd fell into hushed, expectant silence. The Lossoth hesitated, then placed the palantir onto his pile. This drew another wild cheer from the entire audience save Haleth, who was still trying to comprehend how a Man could best an Elf.

Now the tribe circled the playing area. The Lossoth tossed the palantir first. It rolled smoothly along the beach, knocking down five of the ten uprights. A young man returned the palantir to the Lossoth, who threw it again.

This time it wobbled slightly on its way down the course. Only two of the remaining three uprights tumbled.

The Lossoth looked displeased when he took the palantir. He held it up with great concentration before throwing it. It rolled down the aisle and knocked over only one of the final uprights. A great clamour arose from the crowd except Haleth, who watched the uprights being set into position with an overwhelming sense of dread.

Inglor took the palantir into his hands and studied it carefully. Was he watching it? Haleth wanted to scream in frustration. He could study the fool thing later.  If he lost, he would have all the time in the world to stare into it.

Finally the elf rolled the palantir towards the uprights.

It seemed to hook to the right on the way down, knocking over three of the central rocks.

Haleth's stomach tied itself into several tight knots as she watched a young Lossoth retrieve the palantir and hand it to Inglor.

Again Inglor stared into the palantir before throwing it. This time it bounced several times before knocking over the all of the rocks except for the outermost two.

Haleth gasped. There was no possible way even for Inglor to knock down those two widely spaced rocks.

The Lossoth cried out as one, the young women grinning from ear to ear.

Inglor took the palantir for the third and final time and the crowd fell perfectly silent. Again he gazed into its depths, then threw it in a graceful arc. 

The palantir, glowing blue and green from deep within, literally flew down the course without touching the ground. It glanced the right hand upright, bounced to the left and knocked the final pin to the ground. 

For a space of several timeless seconds the beach was utterly silent. A small part of Haleth's mind desperately sought escape routes while the larger part of it tried to digest what had just happened.

Then the Lossoth broke into loud cheers. They swatted Inglor on the back as he tried to put his shirt on. Only the young women looked extremely disappointed. 

The man who had lost brought the palantir forward and ceremoniously handed it to Inglor, who bowed deeply when he received it.

All eyes except Haleth's were fixed on Inglor. She watched the Lossoth who had lost the palantir. She thought he looked rather relieved; most likely by the fact that the elf would not be attracting all of the attention of every female beyond puberty.

He caught her studying him, shrugged and grinned. Haleth nodded in understanding and went to join the crowd congratulating Inglor.

The next morning dawned slowly with leaden clouds filling the sky. The bay was a cold, flat grey.

Haleth was quite happy to put her back to the north wind and head for warmer climes.

The gravel crunched under her feet. Inglor's passage made no noticeable sound. The palantir was in the pack that hung from his shoulders.

Haleth was determinedly fighting her curiosity to ask the exact details of the betting involved in the previous day's sporting match. She was quite certain she would not be happy with finer points of elven gambling.

Inglor kept his own counsel. Haleth was not entirely certain what to make of his reticence.

As the morning wore on, the stillness beginning to tell on her patience. No bird sang, the balm kept the whine of insect wings away and nothing but them moved from horizon to horizon.

"It looks like rain," she finally said.

"More like snow," Inglor answered.

"Oh," she said with a distinct lack of enthusiasm.

The steady crunching of her boots was again the only sound in the world.

"Inglor," Haleth finally said, against her better judgment.

"Yes?" he asked calmly.

"The game you were playing with the Lossoth, I missed most of it." He gave her a quick, quizzical glance which she determinedly ignored. "What, exactly did you do?"

"Well, the object of the game was to knock over the upright rocks with the palantir," he said.

"Oh."

"A fairly simple principle that is, in fact, not all that easy to execute in reality."

Inglor, unlike most of the elves Haleth had met, loved to explain even the most obvious things at great, great length. She let him ramble on, preferring the sound of his voice to the hollow silence of their surroundings. She ignored most of his words, listening instead to the rising and falling cadence of his voice. It reminded her of a fountain singing in a wooden glade where warm breezes played through the leaves of the trees.

Haleth deliberately bit her tongue to force her attention back to the meaning of Inglor's words rather than the simple enjoyment of his voice.

He paused from his discussion of the relative hardness of rocks and the weight and speed that one had to use to deliver the palantir properly.

"That's fascinating, Inglor," Haleth said in a faraway voice. "How did you handle the betting?"

"Ah," said Inglor, "That is another subject entirely. Elves very seldom place wagers but humans often make a habit of gambling. It was simply a matter of knowing what was important to the person I was betting against and to act accordingly."

This was genuinely interesting on its own merit.

So it was no real wonder when Inglor abruptly stopped speaking.

Haleth considered the pile of things she had seen during the match.

"You also drew him into a sense of false security, didn't you?" she said.

"Yes," he said slowly. "I had to build up to the palantir. He would not have bet it from the start."

Inglor fell silent again. It might have been Haleth's imagination, but he almost looked uncomfortable.

The wings of suspicion fluttered into her mind.

"Things didn't go exactly as you expected, did they?" she asked, keeping her voice even.

"Well, no," Inglor answered reluctantly. "It took me some time to get the feel for the strength and skill needed to roll the palantir."

"And?" Haleth prodded him.

Inglor studied his feet and said nothing. It was as close to guilty as Haleth had ever seen him.

"You didn't quite understand the betting part either, did you?" she asked.

"Not at first, no," Inglor said. "I'm afraid I got further behind than I wanted to be. But I think I mastered it by the end."

They crunched along in uncomfortable silence.

"Weren't you worried about betting yourself?" Haleth asked. Inglor looked at her, perplexed.

"That is what you did just before the last match, isn't it? After you'd lost your shirt?"

He nodded slowly.

The seeds of the nagging suspicion that had planted itself in Haleth's mind began to germinate.

"Forever is an awfully long time to spend on the Bay of Forochel," she said calmly.

"I wasn't worried about that," he said, a fraction too quickly.

Haleth remembered the look of relief the Lossoth had had on his face when he had handed the palantir to the elf.

"You knew that he really didn't want you there," she said, momentarily moving the conversation in another direction.

"I was fairly confident of that, yes," Inglor said.

This was the first time Inglor had admitted to being aware of the affect his physical presence had on people. Under normal circumstances, she would have pounced on the subject. At the moment she refused to be distracted.

"And?" Haleth asked, her tone deceptively sweet.

Inglor looked at her in mild confusion.

"And?" he repeated.

"And the other reason you were not worried about losing," Haleth's smile was a cold as the ice of Helcaraxë.

Inglor remained silent.

"What is it, elf? Tell me or so help me I'll... I'll..." she groped for a credible threat. "I'll tell Cirdan you almost burned one of his ships."

"That was purely accidental," Inglor protested. "Besides, I put the fire out in time."

"We put the fire out," Haleth corrected him. "What is it? Out with it."

She already knew the answer, but wanted to hear it from him own lips.

"Well," he finally confessed, "As I said I did get a bit more behind than I'd expected."

Haleth snorted derisively.

"I'd run out of things to bet," he said slowly, dredging the words from the guilty depths of his soul. "I'd lost my sword, and everything I was carrying. And I couldn't just give up after getting so close.

"I bet you," he finally forced the words. They poured out like the waters escaping from behind a broken dam. "And I lost."

The footsteps took on a military sharpness.

"You lost me to a Lossoth without even bothering to ask if I minded being wagered," Haleth said with no emotion in her voice.

"Well, that's a gross simplification of a very complex situation," he said. "But, yes. I was fairly confident I could win you back, though."

"Fairly confident," Haleth echoed quietly.

"And it did work out at the last," he said.

"No wonder you weren't worried about losing," Haleth mumbled.

"Because he really did not want me there."

"Because I'd have sent you straight to Mandos and you knew it," Haleth said in the sweet tone of a homicidal lark contemplating mayhem.

Inglor looked at her with what might have been regret.

They did not speak again for the remainder of the day.