Wild Monster

by Matthew Harrington

  Was this a Noldor?

  "But this… this is Lord Elrond, gods," he panted, caught between relief and abject horror. "Dorondir, what has befallen the Lord of Rivendell?"

  He dropped to Westron, "Sick."

  "Have shadows found him?" Eithahawn touched the man's throat for a pulse, and found one there, though it seemed fast, for an elf. He half turned, "Call the healers. Take him to the Healing Hall – Mirkwood shall attend the Lord of Rivendell!"

  "Carefully. Lift him up carefully!" Dorondir directed the rush of Silvan elves who gathered the Lord of Rivendell and lifted him across to a long drape of silk, which was how afflicted elves were often carried.

  Eithahawn impacted with Dorondir and caught the front of his travel clothes in his hands, "Where is he!?"

  Dorondir's pale green eyes were huge with amazement.

  "This is his cloak. Where is he?" Eithahawn backed them up several steps. He was just enough taller than the Silvan that it made Dorondir look outmatched, which the warrior, spy, and sometime guard of the same Kingdom's-seneschal very much was not.

  "My Lord?"

  Eithahawn was not shouting, he was earnest. That was all. "Where is Adar?"

  Something twigged in the astonished elf. He was, essentially, a spy from Rivendell, even if one agreed upon by the rulers of each great collective of Middle-Earth elves. But Dorondir had been so many hours trapped in this nightmare of his fallen Lord of Rivendell he had forgotten all other feeling. The mention of 'father' jogged him. He suddenly remembered not just his Rivendell Lord, but his Mirkwood King. He folded forward, agonized. "We were attacked by Orcs, and I left him."

  "What?" Eithahawn felt something in his brain break. He shook the man, "Say again?"

  "Attacked by a slaughter of Orcs, and I took the Lord of Rivendell… and left the King there." Dorondir's forehead bowed almost onto Eithahawn's shoulder.

  The Kingdom's seneschal was dazed. He could hardly breathe, "Tell me you did not do this thing." He shook Dorondir, roughly this time. "Tell me so."

  "He sent me with the Lord, and is with the Istari and her men. He stood tall on the banks of the Anduin's streams to Forest." Dorondir told his beloved friend. "Eithahawn."

  Eithahawn shoved his friend away from him and the War Room rang with his shout. "You useless man!" The glassware on the sideboard crackled. Wine seeped from the vessel and dribbled to the cut stones in this circular room whose floor was a map of the known world. The wine pooled in Ered Mithrim and began to flow down the Anduin. "Hold him!" Eithahawn snapped at the section. "And all available sections, under steel to the assembly halls! We clean this forest from the Halls to the fingers of the Anduin. Find the King!"

  Where was Legolas when he was sorely needed? Fires!

  A response rang in the room, "Harthon." As much to say 'We shall'.

  "Guard him!" Dorondir demanded of the elves who now circled around him to lead him to a sealed room. He was under house arrest in the Halls, now, but ignored this. He had guarded the Kingdom's-seneschal many times in the past, and for many years, and knew the elf well. "Guard him and do not allow him to ride out!"

  Eithahawn's aqua eyes were on the stone floor. They stared at the point where the small river fingerlings of the Anduin reached for the Forest. "Find my King." He yanked the white-gold and peridot clip of his station out of his hair and squeezed it in his shivering fist. This wasn't a matter of station. It was a thing between sons and fathers. And if A Certain King strolled in here in a couple of hours, easy as you please, Eithahawn would throttle him. He swore it.

  Within a handful of minutes he began to hear the footfalls of sections in the long rooms to either side of him, and section heads began to show up in their light armour and helmets to line the War Room. They didn't speak to him until all those war-girded leaders ringed the room. The highest ranking among them would have been Legolas if he hadn't gone off to be 'abroad in the world', and leave all this panic and responsibility to his not-quite-brother.

  Now the highest rank belonged to Merilin, and that man stepped forward. "We are assembled." He bowed to the Kingdom's-seneschal, utterly in the dark about why they were all collected.

  "The King was attacked by a slaughter of Orcs somewhere between the Anduin's tributaries and the Forest." A great stir passed through the elves in the room, for which Eithahawn felt great patience, "I do know he survived it. I do not know if he is under pressure from yet another assault. He is with the Istari and her Rangers." He said above the numb buzzing inside his skull.

  "We are yours. Command us," Merilin said breathlessly.

  "One-third of you into the immediate orbit of the Halls, out of sight. One-third mobile and visible on the land. Arasell's section goes to Lake Township and brings all local sections, the Rangers and forces to alert. Everyone else sweep up-river and clean this forest. Bring me the Elvenking."

  Merilin waved the section heads around him. He divided the responsibilities.

  Elves were underway in minutes.

  They left the Kingdom's-seneschal standing in the War-Room, cold.

  There was no way that he would be able to hide this event from the Emissaries.

  They had opinions on everything. Such as a Kingdom being entrusted to a half-Silvan.

  He shivered in his sleep, tossed through battles.

  Blood, screams, foes, weapons, and openings.

  The little fractures between life and death on the battlefield – openings. He saw them almost as if they were outlined in sunny yellow. The battlefield, the orcs, and goblins, the blood, and Angmar Men all around him – shades of steel and grey, but with crystal clear flashes of sunlight yellow.

  Goblin. Sword-forms too vertical. Bait. Stoop under. Turn. Opening between breastplate and shoulder. Reverse blade. Turn blade. Stab inward. Step around to extract. Block incoming with second sword. Next. He flowed like water through the lights in this fatal world, pulled along with reckless haste because of his great skill, and because he was a messenger from the Halls of Mandos, a Prince of death.

  Just watching him, Lusis was terrified for his safety. Blades coasted by him, so close they glided over the gloss of his breastplate, shivered past the end of his eyelashes. He was as close to the bleeding edge as a body could come without taking injury from it.

  Case in point – Elves did fall around him. He didn't see them yet. He couldn't. He was lost in the cool silent world of his work. He shut his long eyes in a slow blink as he spun in air. He split open the head of a troll and drifted down like snow.

  This Thranduil was a great roaring engine. To her eyes his body a cylinder of white-hot star fire. He was a machine of war. She watched him, both mesmerized and horrorstruck by him. She looked for a way to stop him, or pull him away from this terrible plain of bodies and blood, but he didn't care to hear her. For ahead of them, rose a radiance in answer.

  His father.

  Oropher stood straight from atop a tumble of Orc bodies, his white-gold hair rippling, and his body drenched in the rose golden light of morning. They briefly saw each other. Oropher's pale grey eyes witnessed the artistry of his most beautiful son, and adored it. His favourite. His darling. Thranduil, the lithe shape that rushed over him, twin swords sunk deep in the craw of a worm-head.

  Lusis caught him, steered him. She raised him up out of the heart-pounding rhythm of combat, the one place where he most pleased adar, and best expunged himself. It was dark and cool where they surfaced. She could scarcely see a thing with her Istari eyes, but… the room was wide. It echoed. And the air was soothing. It smelt of rain, grass, and trees, and Lusis felt a simple smile at that. She heard a silky voice.

  Le melin, my coming of spring. Can nothing quell that racing mind of yours?

  Lusis froze. That would be his wife, she assumed.

  His wife who'd vanished in war and met a terrible fate.

  Bringing him along to her, to hear her voice was simply not safe.

  She struggled with him, pulled hard on that powerful, thoughtless, feverish bra
in. Follow me.

  Flickers of her earnest face before him. Her Rangers of the North. As filthy at the gates of the Halls as beasts, and threatening to the mathematical order of the elves. Her large, dark brown eyes – alien eyes – as she'd looked down at him in his borrowed bed in Lake Township because she could see fire in him. And he'd felt a rush of cold recognition. And the gulf between what they both were, had reversed itself in one disorienting rush.

  Fire. The Secret Fire given to all living things by Eru Iluvatar. Human and elf eyes could not see it. Not in themselves. Not in others.

  Unlike Istari eyes.

  Even in this dreaming-place, Lusis straightened up – straightened up in the real world, the one outside of her Elfking's fever dream. She was suddenly… content. Leave it to his circuitous mind to see even this little shadow inside of her, and shore her up.

  Here. Here is what your fire is like.

  She pressed that image against him, that golden tongue of flame rising into a tornado of white fire, because it wasn't possible that he'd ever seen his own divine spark – and the Elfking's eyes opened in the real world. He gasped in the boat on Forest River.

  He shivered and moved under the blankets and furs. His long hands came out first, and pushed at the many layers. He swept the warm shell back from his head and shoulders. His mussed blond hair tumbled out and bounced against her wrists. It was always going to be a pleasure, a pure tactile pleasure, to be in his company.

  "What was that?" he gasped. His eyes were large.

  Lusis exhaled and touched his hair to rights before his pointed ears. She kept her voice low as she said, "Something isn't right with you. When you go into… those places where elves rest. It is increasingly hard to get you back again."

  The King went still and watched her hands dart around his face to fix his hair. He was calm again by the time he asked, "And did you do that, Lusis Buckmaster? Is it so? Can you now pass through the barred gates into my thoughts and find me buried there, under so much time? Can you do this thing?"

  She told him, "I…" she steeled herself, "I do what is necessary to protect the ones I love."

  Nimpeth glanced up from where she moved the boat tirelessly ahead in the turgid river. Redd's head turned away from the small steel vessel on the brass brazier suspended above the water to one side of the boat. "Is he awake?"

  Lusis leaned in to look at the King's large blue-silver eyes. "I think so."

  "I'll fix him tea. There were supplies with the boats. Honey and wafers. Try him?" Redd nudged Icar awake, and the young man took over tending the fire while Redd went into the steel tin of supplies. It was well into the night now, and the fires suspended beside the boats were their only light and heat.

  The King pulled her attention around, "What did I see?"

  She tucked his fur around him because the wind had risen and rain was in the night sky. And she didn't know what to tell him. For her part, Lusis wasn't sure why it was she was passing in and out of elves' waking dreams. But it was useful. When she was near him, Ewon dreamed of fear and pain, of seeing his King with no steel to gird him, and the arrows of Men falling like rain – it was every single fear he had for this new Age. That the good in Men was thin and could not be trusted. They would turn on him. When Ewon was in the grey clouds between the sleep of Men and the reverie of Elves, the wound that slanted through his back and ended in his chest also plunged him into nightmares.

  She'd spent some brief time in Glorfindel's abstracted mind. She'd seen the great siren of his being – that Lord of Order, Elrond, for whom Glorfindel would die. Glorfindel walked those grey places, between, earnestly sending his Lord strength. He saw this in terms of a journey through the unruly woodland realm of the equally anarchic and insular Elvenking, and that was what she had seen in her mind. The golden Noldor was a creature of caesuras, rests, sets. Inside his mind there rocked a slow and inevitable metronome. Regulation, principle, and a commitment to righteousness had made him beautiful, strong, cloudless, and, in some ways, almost implacable.

  In the same way, forces across Thranduil's entire existence had made him wily, surreptitious, and calculating. The intelligence that was part of his allure was also part of what made him impossible.

  The air seemed to shift. Lusis got to her feet at a whisper of sound. Just as quickly, Redd rose and came around low with his sword lopping air. Even half-awake, Icar skittered up to catch the pole Nimpeth had abandoned. Because the tall elf-woman had noiselessly leapt to the stern. Her bow was up and knocked. Her limber body blocked access to the King. Ewon, at the bow of the boat, slung low around the tall wooden bowsprit and braced, now using his injured arm. A few invisible shapes seemed to tumble by in the dark. Lusis' teeth bared. "Cover the fire," she hissed.

  Redd hurried to deposit the steel lid over it. He pulled a handle that closed vents to the coals. For a moment, there was nothing but Redd carefully bracing the little pot of tea to the side of the boat, and the sound of Icar moving the boat ahead.

  Behind her, she could see Elsenord at the bow of their boat, his sword out, and his face turned to the night sky. He held a small oil lamp up in air.

  Everyone was ready. Steed and the girl, Raineth, had bows out. Aric stood before Lindir, who sat at the stern of the boat. Glorfindel couldn't guard the Lord's-seneschal, being as he was pushing the boat forward. And then the King made a soft hiss of sound. The moon blotted out above them. Then it was like being pelted with small stones. Lusis slashed because it was habit to do so, but she couldn't exactly collect up and stab these things in air – they were fleet. Though she did hit enough that several rained down on the deck.

  Aric made a long, drawn out cry of irritation at them from the boat behind. "Stupid rats!"

  Lusis understood. She made a sharp hiss as a trio of bats shot along her sword arm and drew blood. "Filthy, stupid rats!" A flare of golden popping lights brightened the water beside the King's boat. The bats who had bitten her had exploded.

  In the boat behind the King's, Elsenord gave a laugh. Glorfindel pulled the second boat close beside with a few skillful pushes.

  "Enough!" The King's voice tore through the dark with a sudden blue radiance. Fire rose to a nearly crystalline blue-silver inside of him, and in the sudden flare of light, Lusis could see streams of bats tearing by. They made high-pitched squeals as his light touched them. Those too close to him snuffed out, and were flying dust. The rest shot off into the night.

  Glorfindel landed on the King's boat with Lindir close behind him. He anchored the second boat with a rope to the first. "What obscenity have your elves allowed into this so-called Kingdom?" He scoffed. He rose and turned toward the Elfking. Nimpeth's back straightened. She stepped in the way.

  Thranduil stood with a quivering hand closed over his chest, "Find no fault with them." He didn't open his eyes, having expended so much energy.

  But now that Glorfindel had reached Nimpeth, he swept a powerful arm as if to brush her aside. She was an afterthought between two influential nobles – and in a verifiable sense, such as on paper, she was no more than that. In every sense that mattered, however, she could not be brushed off. Red-haired Amathon touched down on the deck, far too close to Glorfindel. The golden-Noldor was forced to divert his course.

  "Don't trouble me, Silvan. I must speak to the King. Begone." the great elf told the Elite.

  The small, dark-haired, Noldor archer, Raineth, pulled up short on her way to the boat. She glanced at Glorfindel and gasped, "My Lord."

  Glorfindel made a soft hiss at her, "Quiet, child. Don't you see that I have entrusted my Great Lord to this edhel who the Silvan crowned, and his woods are full of the foul spies of the Enemy?"

  Thranduil's graceful head tipped. "Which Enemy would that be?"

  Now Glorfindel caught himself and blinked.

  "The One Ring and its Dark Lord are no more." The King stepped forward. "Is there something you are failing to tell me, Glorfindel? Something the Lord meant to pen, perhaps?" His long arms closed behind his
back, expectantly.

  The elf was stunned. "What? Do you believe he would keep such a thing from you?"

  "We are not the same," the Sindar King stepped toward him. The wind billowed the clothes he wore around him, and he shone in the baleful light from the sky. But Lusis could see that the fire inside him had fallen back to a dangerously low blue flame.

  "Protect him, Nimpeth," she whispered. Lusis moved into position at the King's side just scant feet away from the elf woman. She glanced at Amathon and he pulled in close.

  Glorfindel's hand swung through air, "There is no threat left in Middle Earth that is worth the attention of the elves."

  "You should better hope that is the case," Thranduil's calm voice held the presence to fix the golden elf in place, "because you have already given up looking for it, even if it is my suspicion that this threat has afflicted your very Lord."

  Now Glorfindel's brows drew down in anger. "As usual, you have no proof for us."

  "Because a foe is elusive, does not render it harmless." The Elfking said. "The evidence is around us to be perceived, but you cannot credit it, because it is less than obvious. But you must understand, Glorfindel, that this is the Age of Men, and the enemy is adapting. We must also adapt."

  "It is for Men to face them." The Elf told him. "They must grow accustomed to a world without us in it. They must-"

  "You have no stake in this place," the Elfking said sharply. "I have thousands of elves, yet. I am in this world until the last of them boards a ship for the West and they pull me by the hand behind them."