Warning--this chapter contains descriptions of the effects of torture and rape.

Failure to Heal

            Gandalf and Saruman sat in a private audience chamber in the keep of the Prince of Dol Amroth, taking part in the questioning of a brother of the current holder of the title who’d recently been rescued from Harad.  There he’d apparently been held as a slave for much of the last seventeen years since his abduction from his pleasure yacht alongside several noble companions.

            “How on earth was he even recognized as the brother to the Prince?” demanded Saruman in a harsh whisper.

            The Grey Wizard could appreciate his White colleague’s apparent uncertainty.  Just looking at the Man before them one could not easily see any resemblance to Inruil, the Prince of Dol Amroth.  One side of his face was heavily scarred, with the eye missing as well as a good part of the corresponding ear.  The scalp was quite bald as well as badly discolored—it was unlikely that any hair could grow upon it now.  Teeth appeared to be missing, and the jaw was stiff and could not open in a normal manner.  It was obvious that speaking was difficult, and Gandalf found himself wondering if the poor creature could even think clearly any longer, much less eat properly.

            But when the Prince shifted in his seat, the remaining eye watched hungrily, and Gandalf was pleasantly surprised to realize that what had appeared to be a grimace of distaste was in reality a delighted—and relieved—smile of recognition.  As for that eye—it was clear enough, once one looked past the scar tissue that disfigured so much of the brow and nose alongside it.

            He could speak, although not clearly, and it took patience to make out all that was being said.

            “I—was struck—heavily—on the—the side—of the head.  I woke in chains.  In chains.  Chains.”  He was looking down now on his hands, which also were disfigured.  All of the fingers on the left hand had been crushed, and the other hand was also badly twisted, although apparently usable.  “We were in the hold—the hold of—a ship.  There was a harbor.  Umbar, I think.  We were brought off the ship in the night, and to a large building.  Several were taken away.  Most—most I—never saw again.  We heard—heard some—some—were given to Sauron.  Killed for him.

            “Evil Men took me.  There were Men, Men and orcs.  They brought three—three friends from—from my yacht.  The Men knew—knew my name, my father.  They wanted me.  Wanted to—to use me.”

            It took time to get the story out of him, but it appeared that the attempt had been made to destroy his identity and his will.  They tortured his friends in front of him, seeking to convince him that if he did what they wished of him they would spare the others.  They even forced him to take part in the torture of one youth of whom he’d been very fond.

            “They wanted—wanted to—taint me.”  He paused before looking intently at his brother.  “I killed him—killed him cleanly, a mercy thrust.  What they’d done to him—they wanted to destroy us all.  Destroy us.  All.”  Gandalf sensed the unspoken cry for understanding and forgiveness.  “They would not have—have let me stop, once they had me begin.  They were angry when they realized what I’d done.  They beat me.  Beat my head.  I almost died myself.  I didn’t—didn’t know myself—for a long time.”

            Once the two Wizards were allowed to return to the room given to their use, Saruman, having made certain that the door was secure and that no one lingered to overhear their discussion, turned upon Gandalf.  “Do you credit what he has told us?  Do you believe he is indeed the missing Anhuil?”

            “Yes.”

            Saruman examined the Grey Wizard’s face closely, his own expression incredulous.  “How can you be certain?” he demanded.  “After all, it has been long believed that one of the lesser wraiths seen amongst those who assailed Boromir in Osgiliath was this Anhuil.”

            Gandalf gave a small shake to his head, wondering how to explain himself in a manner in which his brother Wizard could understand.  “The song of the Sea as it is heard here in Dol Amroth, it is in the Man’s heart and blood.  He is calmed and strengthened by it as by nothing else.  He and his brother know one another, and a simple gesture from the one that no others would see significance to the other responds to—the goblet of wine presented, the hand held, the lifting of the head to listen mirrored.  No one who had not grown up with the Prince would recognize the intent of such gestures, and the same for those who did not grow up with Anhuil.  After all, it is said that Inruil and Anhuil were ever as close as if they’d been born at the same time.  Also, he knows Quenya as it has been spoken here in Dol Amroth.  That lullaby he was humming—I heard it sung by Mithrellas for her son Galador when he was yet an infant, and it is one she heard sung by the Lady Galadriel when Mithrellas was but a small child in her own turn, just after her parents died in Lindon and her uncle brought her to Laurelindórenan for the sake of safety.  Only here, in all of Gondor, is that cradle song commonly sung by parents to soothe a fractious child.”

            “He could be one of the missing companions to Anhuil.”

            But Gandalf’s shake of his head was more emphatic.  “You think that after what his brother has told us of his intimate knowledge of his bedroom and sitting room when first he arrived here from Harad?  And the message that was brought to the Prince that gave him hope that Anhuil was indeed in Harad—the mention of a detail shared by only the two of them would be hard to duplicate by anyone else, no matter how close that one might have been to Anhuil before the yacht and its passengers were taken.

            “Nay,” he continued, “it would appear that the wraith who was seen in Osgiliath was most likely one of Anhuil’s companions from his yacht.  After all, two of those taken with him were sons to their mother’s brother, and were said to resemble both Anhuil and Inruil closely.”

            “But why were those aboard that yacht taken, and why first to Umbar?” grumbled Saruman.

            The Grey Wizard shrugged.  “Many of those taken in the past few decades have been closely related to the rulers of Men, Elves and Dwarves.  In Eriador many who have been related to the Heirs of Isildur have been abducted, even Richeled, kinswoman to Araglas and Arahad, while members of the royal house of Dale and a son to the Lord of Pelargir have been abducted, not to mention two of Dior’s granddaughters, the children of Denethor’s sister.  What better means of causing those who would lead in the defense of their own realms to lose heart than by taking their kinsmen and kinswomen and turning them to evil purposes?”

            Saruman turned to lean upon the windowsill, looking out toward the town that lay beneath the walls of the keep.  “Perhaps more of those who have disappeared are to be found dwelling as slaves in Harad and Umbar, considering the manner in which this wretch was found.”

            “Perhaps,” agreed Gandalf, but what he might have said next was interrupted by a knock upon the door.  Saruman turned to look at him, one brow raised, and at a brief nod from his superior Gandalf went to open the door.  “My Prince?” he said inquiringly. 

            Inruil of Dol Amroth entered the room, followed by a second, older Man.  “This is Amandil, who has served as healer to our family for three decades now.  He watched Anhuil, our sister Lavriniel, and me grow up, and he agrees that this is—is indeed—my brother.”

            Saruman turned from the window to face the healer.  “You are certain of this?”

            The older Man nodded.  “I cannot question his identity.  Where his leg was broken when he was a child shows the place where the bones knit, complete with the small spur that developed once he was healed, and there is the wine stain upon the left side of his back that is as we all remember it, as well as that cluster of three moles on the right upper arm.  He also had his leg tattooed when he was sixteen, a tattoo that became infected and led to the formation of a marked raised scar on his left calf.  There is more scarring there now, but under it the tattoo and the original scarring, which is of a different nature from that caused by the beatings he’s suffered, can still be discerned.  And he asked me why I did not bring out the feathers.”

            Saruman’s lips tightened.  “What is this about feathers?”

            Amandil gave a crooked smile.  “When I deal with infants I often check the sensitivity of their skin by brushing it with a cluster of feathers, and Anhuil loved to play with this cluster, which I often carry with me in my healer’s bag, when I was called in to deal with whatever mishap he’d gotten himself into, not an uncommon occurrence when he was a child and youth.  He tended to take many chances he ought to have avoided while he was growing up.

            “No, my Lord Curunír, I do not question his identity any more than does Prince Inruil.”

            Gandalf asked, “What is it that you wish to share with us, Master Amandil?  Would the two of you wish to sit and be more comfortable?”

            Once Gandalf had brought two chairs for their visitors and they were seated, the healer cleared his throat.  “When the ship returned with Anhuil, Inruil here asked that I examine him and determine if I was assured this was indeed his brother.  As I have explained, I am convinced that this is indeed Anhuil of Dol Amroth.  But what has disturbed me most is what—they—did to him, and apparently from shortly after they took him.  He was—forced, forced many times.  It would appear that they sought to break him through degradation as well as through torture and through forcing him to join them in the tortures inflicted upon others.  When he killed Landhradal rather than allow the boy to continue to be tortured at length by their captors, depriving them of what they had been certain was their greatest hold over him as well as their best means to distort his nature, he raised their ire sufficiently that he was beaten into insensibility, almost to death, as I am certain that you yourselves have deduced.”

            At their indications of understanding, Amandil went on.  “The beating was apparently primarily inflicted by one individual who was prodigiously strong.  He may have been one of the more vicious of the uruks, or a giant of a Man.  The beating was markedly to the one side of his head, breaking his skull and the orbit of the eye and the nose, bursting his eye and costing him even his ear.  His shoulder and arm were both shattered and poorly set, and the kneecap was broken as well.  That he awoke from the injuries to his body and brain is a miracle; that he regained his sensibilities and his awareness of his identity is an even greater one.

            “Indications are, however, that at first they sought to strip him of both his will and his self control, perhaps even his identity, and that they were seeking to bring him to a point of carnal urgency that they could turn to their own purposes.  From what I can tell, they intended to use him—to use him—for breeding.  But the beating he suffered—well, let it be stated simply that what was done to him while he was unconscious made him totally unfit for such a purpose.  So, in the end they sold him into slavery in Harad instead.  And, once he was finally able to communicate fully through writing again, he managed to contrive the sending of a message indicating where he was so that he could be found and won free and brought home again.  He was always highly intelligent, and what he has been able to use of his intelligence has been enough to save him in the end. 

            “But when I went to inspect his manhood—well, they did not fully castrate him, but they did manage to unman him.  I do not believe he will be able to know the joys of congress with a woman ever again.  Nor, after what he has known, do I think him capable of knowing any pleasures of any sort from sexual tenderness.  Even the gentlest of touches evoked such—terror!”

            “He was forced?” murmured Gandalf.

            “Repeatedly,” Inruil affirmed.  “He shuddered terribly when I asked him about it, but at last admitted it.”

*******

            “Well, what do you think?” Gandalf asked his fellow once the healer and the Prince of Dol Amroth had left their quarters.  “It appears that Anhuil was intended to be used in the further breeding of orcs, but proved too resistant to the attempts to corrupt his nature properly.”

            “Is not such a conclusion strictly conjectural in nature?” Saruman responded.

            “What else are we to conclude?”  Gandalf felt extremely frustrated by the White Wizard’s apparent intent to be contrary.  “Think, my friend!  Elven children have been taken and have been exposed to experiences intended to rouse carnal appetites at an early age.  Many of the women known to have been taken to Dol Guldur have been seen to be pregnant, and what has become of them or their children is unknown.  Men, women, and children of all races have been abducted, and new strains of orcs have become more prevalent throughout Middle Earth.  And now we have Anhuil of Dol Amroth who was repeatedly brutalized in a sexual manner but was forced too far before his will was broken, damaged to the point he cannot hope to marry and cherish a wife as is intended for the Children of Ilúvatar.  Is it not plain he was intended to serve his masters as a breeder of more slaves at the very least?”

            “It is possible that this was their intent,” Saruman admitted, but grudgingly, considering his tone.  “But we cannot be certain of their full intent without being able to question those who took him.  However, the idea that all races are being included in programs to breed orcs and goblins is certainly intriguing.  I must study this further.”

 *******

            Gandalf left Dol Amroth a few days later headed northward again.  He wished to consult with Elrond, Glorfindel, Galadriel, and Celeborn once more, and perhaps with Radagast as well.  Too much evidence had been found indicating that the Nazgûl and the Necromancer were intent on developing new strains of orcs, and the mere thought that such creatures as Hobbits might have been included in such experiments for some reason particularly sickened him.  It was well known that the first orcs had been corrupted from Elves abducted by Melkor, and perhaps some of those who walked Middle Earth today had once awakened under the stars by the waters of Cuiviénen but did not truly remember their own beginnings.  And for many decades, if not centuries, those known for leadership had been singled out as victims of abductions and attacks involving Morgul blades.  He shuddered at the enormity of the apparent attempt to use the nobility of Men, Elves, and Dwarves to create more horrors for all of the Free Peoples to face as they sought to resist the evil that intended to subjugate them all.  As for the inclusion of Hobbits in such plans—such pure and light-hearted folk should never be touched by foul magics, much less twisted from the joys of honest day to the terrors of lightless dark. 

            Yes, it was time to seek out the rest of the Wise and take counsel on how they might counter such a program.

            He was far north in Lebennin when he heard a cry of pain beyond a low rise ahead of him.  “That sounds like a child!” he murmured aloud, and hurried forward.  He breasted the rise and saw a fallen standing stone lying upon its side by the bank of a river, near the river’s crossing.  A memory passed from the staff he clutched into his mind, and he saw again the day when that obelisk was raised, so long ago, to commemorate the victory of Eldacar over his traitorous and cruel cousin Castamir, when the Winged Crown again returned to the keeping of Valacar’s son.  “When did it fall?  Have those who live in this area allowed the memory of that time to so fade away?”

            Again there was an intense groan of pain, and he went forward again, searching for whomever it was who had been hurt.  Finally, just past the standing stone, which at its base had been eight feet wide, he found the crumpled figure of a boy of about eleven summers trying vainly to make it to his feet.

            “Now, what have we here?” the Wizard asked, coming to the child’s side to examine the situation.  He gently pushed the boy back to a seated position, and ran his hand over one leg, which appeared to pain the lad badly.  “Broken!” he breathed, after using all of his senses to examine the leg.  “Not broken through—more like a stick when it partly breaks because it is still green.  I would not suggest trying to walk upon it, not when you have someone such as I am to carry you home.  Let me lift you up, and you can direct me as to where you live, and we will summon a healer to deal with it.  However did you come to this pass, young Man?”

            The boy pointed up at the fallen stone.  “I jumped off that,” he explained.  “Oh!” he cried, “but it hurts!”

            “I am certain that it does, but it will be better quite soon.  Why were you jumping off that stone, and how in Middle Earth did you get up there to begin with?”

            “All of the boys jump off of it,” the child explained, “and they were saying I was—that I was a coward for refusing to do so, too.  But I couldn’t bring myself to do it, not when they were all watching me and calling out advice.  And I got up on it from down there at the tip—it’s easy to climb upon it from there and walk up it to this end.”

            “I see.  Which way should I go, then?  That way?  Very well.  So, you had to work up your courage to jump yourself, and did so when you were alone, did you?  Not that unusual in the children I have known during my time in Middle Earth.  Not that unusual, but not the wisest thing for you to have done in this case.  It is lucky that I came along when I did so that I could bring you home.  Ah, I see the village.  Which way should I go once I reach the main square?”

            He soon had the boy in his parents’ keeping, and the healer was fetched and the leg properly splinted and the child given a draught for the pain.  In thanks for his help, the child’s father gave him a leg of lamb and a basket of root vegetables as provisions for his further journey.  Gandalf refused further hospitality, explaining that he was journeying north and felt it necessary to keep upon his way as long as the daylight remained, and soon enough he returned to the crossing of the Erui, where he paused to examine the fallen obelisk once more.  “I wonder if Círion realizes that the obelisk has fallen.  I should mention it to him—encourage him to raise it up again.”

            He was about mid-stream in the river when the fabric of Arda began to shake unexpectedly, and he realized that something of terrible import had occurred to Elrond’s wife!

 *******

            At the next outpost of the army Gandalf stopped, begging the loan of a horse so as to arrive in Minas Tirith as soon as possible, promising to see it into the keeping of the Steward’s stablemen in the White City.  The captain of the outpost recognized him and granted his petition, and soon the Wizard was headed at speed toward Mount Mindolluin.

            He reached Minas Tirith within a few days.  He’d alternated between a gentle canter and an outright gallop, with rare stops to allow himself and the horse to rest and eat, and a few periods of a simple walk.  He’d done the last once he entered through the Rammas Echor into the fields of the Pelennor, entering the stable just inside the great gates at a sedate pace, his horse rested and ready to be groomed and placed in a stall with clean hay and a good feed with a pail of water for it to drink from; and with words of thanks to which the horse shook its head good-naturedly, he left the stable and climbed through the city as swiftly as he might, using a few of the shortcuts he’d learned through the years in order to reach the Citadel as swiftly as possible.

            “Our Lord Steward Círion is not within the White City at this time,” he was told by the Seneschal.  “He has gone out into Ithilien, near to the Black Gate, to assess the rumors that once again raiders in great wagons approach from the northeast.”

            Yet he was granted another horse with which to head north, and again with the promise that he would leave it with the garrison near the Gap of Orthanc, once again he set upon his way.

            In the end he did not get past Amon Dîn with his loaned steed.  “There are conflicts to the west,” he was told.  “You will not be able to continue that direction more than a few days at most before you will be forced back in this direction again.”

            After thinking on the situation, he decided to head northeast instead.  He could leave the horse with the garrison on Cair Andros easily enough, although it would undoubtedly take him far longer to reach Imladris via the eastern route north on foot.  But in the end he found companions for his return journey:  a pair of horsemen from the Eótheód, far north in the headwaters of the Anduin, having come south with a string of fine ponies and horses to sell and having successfully sold most of their stock, were returning home.  They were willing to allow him to ride with them, using one of the horses they’d intended to use as a pack animal in return for his services as a cook and another guard.  “You can cook?  And fight?” one asked.

            “Given proper ingredients I can cook as well as most who travel the roads,” he assured them.  “And at need you will find me useful in a fight.”

            So he left the horse he’d ridden from the White City there at the garrison at Amon Dîn, and rode north and east with his new companions.

 *******

            As he parted from the horsemen at the place where the West Road emerged from the High Pass, they gave him the horse he’d been riding.  “After the manner in which you defeated those who attacked us beneath the Redhorn, how else could we repay you?” asked one, his fellow nodding his agreement. 

            Gandalf thanked them, and gratefully headed west at last.  It was now late in the season, and the climb up through the pass would be dangerous, particularly if the orcs and mountain goblins were as agitated here as they’d been near the eastern end of the Redhorn Pass.  It was there, he believed, that Celebrían had been attacked, which would account for the increased presence of the foul creatures on the lower slopes of the mountains.  Undoubtedly her father, husband, sons, and their warriors had been searching intently for the place to which she’d been taken, and that would have roused probably every orc hold on the slopes of the Hithaeglir.

            Have they found her? he wondered as he directed his horse into the defile that marked the entrance to the pass.  I have not felt her leave her body behind, although I have sensed that other ellith have died.  How long is it that she has remained in captivity?  How much longer might she survive?  He had himself, using the power contained within his staff, sought for the place in which she was imprisoned, but although orcs had little in the way of magic to them, yet it was usually very difficult and in this case impossible to find their hidden places through the means open to him.  Those who hold her are being protected from afar, he thought, and immediately he saw in his mind the entrance to Dol Guldur as he remembered it from his last visit there.  For a moment he considered calling upon the power of the hidden Ring upon his finger, but then shook his head.  Not with the Enemy perhaps watching, he decided.

            The first day of his ascent was tense.  Dark clouds brooded overhead, and in the late afternoon they broke, drenching all with a pounding rain.  Somewhere to the south lightning flashed and thunder rolled through the alpine valleys between peaks.  He felt mighty anger all about him, and knew that Elrond’s ire was fully roused, as was that of Galadriel in her hidden wood at the foot of Caradhras.  Even Thranduil was focusing his own power upon the depths below the Mountains of Mist, and as he crouched for shelter with his horse beneath an overhang of stone Gandalf thrilled to realize just how mighty the Woodland King was, even without the kind of augmentation known by Elrond and the Lady of the Golden Wood—or himself.  As water from the downpour ran in a fierce rivulet past him, he realized that even Ulmo was taking part in the search for Elrond’s lady, and knew that Círdan also was seeking to add his own impetus to the attempt to find and rescue Celebrían.  The winds of Manwë shook the crowns of the pines above him on the slopes of the mountains, while Yavanna’s herbage sought to indicate the paths taken by the creatures who’d abducted Celebrían and her companions.  The earth shook beneath his feet, and Gandalf rejoiced to know that Aulë himself sought to reveal her prison….

 *******

            “Which way shall you search this time?” Celeborn asked his daughter’s sons.

            After studying the map before them for a few minutes, Elladan indicated one of the more dangerous passes that crossed the heights of the Hithaeglir, one that tended to be used only by the most reckless and desperate of travelers.  “We will search there.  So far none has gone that way, but the one tunnel we found running north from the western slopes of the pass of Caradhras seemed to have gone that direction, and the cave-in that blocked it was definitely very recent.”

            The Lord of Lothlórien examined his grandson’s face closely.  “Then you think that the cave-in within the tunnel was deliberate?”

            “I do,” Elrohir said.  “Particularly as once I’d removed a few of the blocks of stone that fell from the roof I found this underneath them.”  He held up a portion of a hair comb, one wrought of tortoise shell and set with a peridot.

            Celeborn took it and turned it in his hands.  “This was never anything worn by your mother,” he said.

            “No, it was not,” Elrohir agreed.  “But it was worn by Celestië, who was her handmaiden—and her friend.  I have seen it in Celestië’s hair too many times to be mistaken.”

            “As they appear to have been captured together,” Elladan added, “I would hazard that where one was carried the other was taken also.”

            “I will alert your adar, then,” Celeborn sighed.  “And I shall send warriors to await you in the lower slopes on the western side of the mountains.  The road is better and swifter on that side, should you indeed find her.”  He left unsaid but one word—alive.

 *******

            Two were able to scale the heights leading to the nearly inaccessible pass far more readily than could have a score of warriors, and two were better able to both find the entrance to the hidden caverns and to enter undetected than would have been a company of warriors.  And those two, fired by fury at the abduction of their mother and her party, managed to kill those in the outer chamber without letting those in the inner caverns know there was anything wrong.

            The twin sons of Elrond and Celebrían took cover on either side to the entrance to the next inner chamber, listening intently, hoping to learn how many enemies and of what kinds they might be that lay within, and whether or not the captives were likely to be found there or even deeper inside the mountain.

            “But how did she manage to kill her fellow?” demanded the voice of a Man in heavily accented Westron.

            “How can we say?”  That was an orc’s voice, one truculent with mixed fear and disgust at having to deal with a Man as an equal.

            “The one who is dead was intended to become a slave to the Nazgûl!” the first continued.  “Why else do you think that they would send a Morgul knife here?”

            “And we used it upon her!  Do you think that we would mistake the orders given us?”

            The two peredhil sought one another’s eyes, alarm growing within both of them.  Morgul knives and a dead prisoner?  Then what would they find within?

            Now! mouthed Elladan, and the two rushed through the entrance.  There were five orcs and two Men, both Easterlings, most likely from Rhûn.  The fight was swift and intense, but finally the orcs and one of the Men were dead, and only one Man, his face distorted by an older scar and a new wound down his left cheek from which the blood flowed copiously, remained yet alive.  While Elladan bound the yet-living Easterling, Elrohir checked at the door to the innermost room, almost afraid to go further.  Then he saw that one of the orcs had been drinking from a mug wrought from a skull—the skull of an Elf.  His heart froze within his breast, he took a deep breath, and entered the innermost room.  The headless body of a male Elf, long dead by the look and smell of it, hung from hooks just inside the door.  Curufil? he wondered.  He went further.  The room stank of long-spilt blood and urine.

            A squared stone had apparently been used by the orcs as a place of torture.  Spent torches stood in rough-hewn holes cut into the walls, torches that must have been used to illuminate the ministrations wrought upon the prisoners mutilated there.  On the walls, well out of the reach of those forced to watch the actions of their jailers, hung hooks, chains, rakes, knives, and other instruments of agony.  The body of what appeared to have been a woman, now partially desiccated, lay as if it had been thrown there at the foot of the wall nearby, and the chains that had held her in life hung limply from the walls, twisted by the violence with which they’d been pulled from the lifeless body.  The hair of the woman, what there was left of it, appeared like dried cobweb in the light of the one oil lamp that stood upon a high shelf delved into the wall. 

            He might have thought the other body that was in a huddled heap against the wall was dead, also, if it weren’t for the fact that the head twitched, first right and then left, paused, and then twitched again.  Elrohir went forward slowly and touched the nearly bald scalp, finally turning the face toward his own.  The nose was broken and the lip split, and new blood lay over other flows that had been allowed to dry in place over the eyes, which could barely open at all.  “She is safe,” a cracked voice whispered.  “I almost could not do it, but she is safe.”

            He barely recognized his naneth’s voice.  He gathered her up into his arms as gently as he could.  “It is I, Elladan and I, Nana,” he whispered.  “We have found you at last.  We will take you home!”  And weeping, he called for his brother to come to him, to help find the key to remove the chains still binding their mother to the walls.

 *******

            The storm passed in the night, and Gandalf set off in the grey of the false dawn, intent on crossing the High Pass as swiftly as might be done.  But on the third day afterward he had to accept that he could not take the horse further—there had been too much damage done in the storms and earthquakes three days earlier.  At last he removed the saddle and bridle, rubbed the horse down as best he might, and with a blessing on the beast’s head he sent it back down the mountain, having planted in its brain the picture of the lands in the headwaters of the Anduin from which it had come.  He hid the saddle as best he might—he could possibly come that way again, or perhaps direct others to the place where he’d left it—and filled his personal bag as best he could, fashioning the saddlebags into a pack of sorts ere he set off upwards again. 

            The rest of the journey was arduous, to say the least.  Twice he found places where the path had been totally blocked, and he had to go back to find other ways round and through.  Once he fought a troop of mountain goblins and drove them deep back down the cleft from which they’d emerged, blasting away the stone above to block the way so that they would be forced to stay within their own place, away from other travelers seeking to cross the mountains.

            It was three weeks later that he finally came to places where the pass was as he remembered it from earlier journeys, and three more days before he came to the boundaries of the Hidden Valley.  “At last!” he murmured as he began following the trek to the Ford of the Brúinen.  He ought to be within the Last Homely House East of the Sea by two hours after nightfall, he suspected.  Snow began to fall as he crossed the river, and was already inches deep by the time Elrond came to greet him as he approached the door.  But at last he had reached his goal, only four days after the arrival of Celeborn’s warriors escorting Elladan and Elrohir and their mother.

            “Where are they now?” Gandalf demanded as Elrond led him to the Healing Wing.

            “I sent them off with Celeborn’s people to meet the party coming now from Lórien,” Elrond said.  “I do not believe they realized the worst wound their mother had endured.”

            The Wizard felt it in his heart as he entered the room following its occupant’s husband—the Lady Celebrían was pregnant, and the child’s sire was not Elrond Eärendilion!

            “But how…” he began.

            “They drugged her, drugged her repeatedly, and forced her.  From what I can tell they forced both ellith and ellyn.  They were intent on—on breeding even more –more of their kind.  It was the greatest evil they could work upon her, they thought, although she feels she did worse.  They used a Morgul blade upon Celestië, and to release her ere the curse could take her and make of her a wraith under the rule of the Nazgûl, Celebrían was forced to give her the mercy stroke herself.  She used one of her needles, one of the mithril ones she had from Aman, one her mother gave her years ago.  She said that it burned away in her fingers once she removed it from Celestië’s heart, and she felt that the evil burned away with it.  Her fingers are badly burned, but the skin there is far healthier in its renewal of flesh than can be seen elsewhere.  She believed that it was I who came to her and embraced her and—and entered her.  So, she conceived a child.  And even now her body is trying to rid itself of the infant, now before its body is fully formed.  What do I do, Gandalf?  What do I, a healer, do?  Help her keep it?  Or, do I help her let—let it go?”   

 *******

            Never had the Wizard seen such an agonizing miscarriage, and he’d seen more than he’d wished to see in his years within Middle Earth.  But two hours before dawn the next day the body of Celebrían rid itself of its distorted burden.  It had almost begun to take on the form it would have known had it been born in its proper time, and there was no question that it was no Elf.  Gandalf found himself breathing a prayer of thanks that it had not survived, and immediately felt almost as if he’d somehow wronged Celebrían by it.

            As for the mother, she wept and raved, her mind wandering, knowing she’d lost a child and seeking for it, then rejoicing that this last sign of her tortures was gone, and then crying out against the Valar for the absence of a babe at her breast.

            It was over a fortnight before the twins returned with their sister, daeradar and daernaneth, and their escort from the Golden Wood, and they were all devastated to find that most of the time Celebrían was not within her right mind.  Galadriel and Gandalf took it in turn to be with her when Elrond must be about the business of the Lord of Imladris, and it was not long before Galadriel cornered the Wizard after leaving her daughter again in the keeping of Celebrían’s husband.

            “What was done with the child’s body?” she asked in a whisper.

            “We—cremated—it.  At sunrise.  We could not let it be seen by others, you know.  I am not certain that it would have survived to be born, here within this sheltered and blessed valley; it was not intended to be benign, after all.  But there was no question that it was not begotten by Elrond.”

            “The Necromancer has been breeding even fouler and baser orcs than did Morgoth,” she said, straightening to her full height.  “To have created another using my daughter and Elrond’s wife would have been a terrible victory for him to know.  Could it have survived, Mithrandir?”

            He was already shaking his head.  “No, it could not.  It was barely discernible as an infant, but it was not right.  You could feel how—twisted—it was even as what little life it knew fled its form.  But this has wounded her.  To be forced to kill Celestië and then to know this—it almost killed her.”

            “She is fading, my friend.  My beloved daughter—she is fading.  And I cannot hold her back.”

            And Gandalf had to recognize that the Lady of Lothlórien was right in this.

 *******

            Celebrían’s body began to recover, but she could not put on flesh.  Few saw the very few sparks of her old nature upon her.

            “They gave her a poisoned wound,” the denizens of Imladris told one another.  “They gave her a poisoned wound, and she will never be right again, not while she remains within Middle Earth.”

            And in the end she left Middle Earth on one of Círdan’s ships, accompanied by a number of those who’d loved her all of her life.  She’d not been able to accept her husband’s physical expressions of love and devotion, not after what had been done to her.  As he saw her situated in the cabin prepared for her, Elrond helped her prepare for bed, and once she was within her narrow berth he blessed her and put her into healing sleep.  The healer who would accompany her to Tol Eressëa agreed to stay by her and help her as she awoke, and to be by those who would greet them on the other side.

            As Elrond left the ship at last, Círdan took him aside.  “Lord Ulmo has told me that he will not allow harm to approach her, and once she is free of the pull of Middle Earth the rest of the Powers will be able to draw near to her for her strengthening.  They will see to it that she is healed, when she is able to abide that healing.  She will await your coming.”

            That seemed but little comfort as he watched the ship pull away from the quay, as he saw its sails unfurl and the ship sail off into the light of the setting Sun.

            And it felt only right that grey rain hid them from the eyes of most of the inhabitants of the Shire and the Breelands as his party returned eastward, returning to their place in the hidden valley at the feet of the High Pass through the Mountains of Mist.