ERNIL

Chapter 26 ~ Dust to Dust VI

When he finally woke, they were evidently already in their new position.  Gwaelas was there beside his cot, relieved to see him conscious again.  Night was falling on yet another costly day on the plains of the Black Land.

Lying in the dark, Thranduil’s tortured mind wandered in and out of waking dream.  He remembered his father as he had last seen him, presiding in council before the assault.  He had been so assured, so competent, with as firm a grip on life as any of them.  That he could possibly be lost to him now seemed incredible.  He could not completely fathom it, no matter how much he tormented himself with the reality.  He had not even seen him buried, and when he had asked for details Dorthaer had been sparing with them.  He had said only that they had found him beneath the body of his standard bearer, and that it was a sight best forgotten. 

King Thranduil.  What a strange and hollow sound it had, as though he were a boy playing at his father’s work.  He did not feel like a king.  He felt like a failure.

The others had lost their natural fathers long ago, but he had never known that desolation.  They all expected him to wear Oropher’s crown as his own.  They all said he was like him, but Thranduil could never be Oropher.

He closed his eyes and could not help but remember his father’s words on Balar where it had all begun.  They will hear our names again before the end.

Was this finally the end?

He suddenly felt stifled there inside the tent, desperate for the open air.  He knew that what he would find outside would not satisfy him, yet he pushed himself up anyway.  He moved slowly, enduring the awful protest of his wounds.  Somehow he managed to haul himself upright under his own power, meager though that was.

He limped outside, wandering almost aimlessly toward the edge of their camp.  He had to reassure a few guards, but they let him go once they were convinced that he was still in full command of his faculties.  Apparently, he had been rather delirious before, and they were taking no chances now.

As he looked once more over the interior of Mordor, he was suddenly unsure whether he had gone of his own will or had been summoned before the Enemy even as he had been summoned before Gil-galad.  The plain was strangely quiet, the endless ranks of Orcs regrouping and rearming within the distant fortifications.

You are summoned by Lord Annatar.

The memory returned to him in a startling flash, Celebrían leading him in from the gardens of Ost-in-Edhil in the days before its destruction.  A dry and stale wind as from a tomb blew now over the abandoned fields of ash and death.  Thranduil could feel the Dark Lord regarding him now from his mighty black tower.  It was the same cold shiver he had suffered in Eregion so long ago.  Yes, the Dark Lord remembered him, and now he laughed.

Your people excel not in saving lives, but in lamenting them. . . . When you fall, I shall know it.

It was not an audible laughter, but a grim and heartless derision Thranduil could feel piercing him to the core.  Sauron was presumably well pleased with the bitter ruin of the house of Oropher, broken against his gates like waves upon the rocks.

It angered Thranduil, bitterly, so that he trembled more in impotent fury than in pain.  It was a mockery he was powerless to protest, but he at least had not yet succumbed to the ignominious fate Morgoth’s lieutenant had intended to mete out to him.  The might of Eryn Galen had been scattered like chaff in one burning sulfurous breath of the Black Land, just as Annatar had threatened it would be.  But he remained, even if only to face their shame.

He started at the soft touch of a hand on his shoulder which was immediately made firm.

“Thranduil,” Galadhmir frowned, “what are you doing?  Are you trying to cripple yourself?  Back to bed with you.”

~: Continued in Book III :~