Lusis' head swiveled back around quickly enough it hurt. This was the Lady Galadriel? She'd heard the talk: Lady of the Lorien; Shining Lady of the Galadrim; Bearer of Nenya, one of the three Elven Rings of Power. She had kept Lorien and her Silvan Galadrim from seeing the darkness of Sauron, or open conflict for two Ages, the Second and Third, and during that time the Silvan across the Anduin in Mirkwood, had been under constant assault, taking bitter losses in their endless war with Darkness. So Lusis' opinion of her was… complicated.
People called Thranduil insular. Lusis had overheard it in the petition room on her first day here, and in Lake Township among gathered businessmen. But the greatest darkness of the Ages had pushed Thranduil's beleaguered people North of the Mirkwood Mountains with steady bombardment… and no Ring of Power had come for them. Insular was catching. She looked at Galadriel a bit breathlessly, caught between wonder, fear of her, and adulation of the light she emanated. "Welcome, Lady of Lorien, to Mirkwood." She added a pointed, "Have you ever been before?"
Somewhere behind her, among the tall tree-like elves, she swore, someone laughed. That was probably not a good sign.
The Lady Galadriel turned her glorious head as Thranduil stepped up beside her. It was ridiculous how perfect they looked together. And she actually smiled at him, with the flesh under her pale eyes gathering up in a way that was so wonderful it made Lusis gawp. "Thranduil-gael, I will say to you what I have said before," she turned toward him and Lusis saw she was barefoot. "Nothing you do, nothing you are, is wearying." Now Galadriel turned her head in Lusis' direction. "Do you see my light, little Istari?"
Lusis nodded immediately. "Lady… the two of you, together…" she glanced at Thranduil and wondered what she'd done to him. He was burning white-hot. "The two of you, together, smother the details of this room with your lights."
"And you see the light of the rest of us?" This was Glorfindel from close beside her. He was tall, and so expertly cleaned up he seemed almost… mysterious in his cloudy blue robes, all in the style of Mirkwood. He cocked his head, and very nearly his upper body. "It… is it possible for her to be speechless?"
Thranduil's long lashes beat in amusement as he said, "One need only wait for-"
"What are they all doing here, my King?" she looked into the blue light of Glorfindel and up at his face. "Beautiful colour, actually, warm, pale blue." She turned from him, "Please forgive any discourtesy," she inhaled deeply, "I'm a human and I don't know your ways."
"She isn't an Istari, then?" a youngish elf – which meant nothing – raised her cream-brown head in question and looked, immediately to Galadriel.
"My seneschal, Meluien." Galadriel gave a soft, graceful gesture at the Silvan beauty. Meluien, like her lady, was dressed in layers of sheer, pale material, but the fabric was soft peach in colour rather than her Lady's white and silver. Like Eithahawn, Meluien wore a 'half crown'. In this sense, it was like the Elfking's Living Crown, because it wrapped the back of their heads. Meluien's was a half-ring of morning glories in silver, and like Eithahawn's, it clipped into her fair hair.
Lusis nodded at her, "Right. Nice to meet you too, Meluien, and… everyone. Please believe me. It is with great and deep respect that I say to you, unless you fought off a filthy ball of bats, a slaughter of Orcs, a pack of Warg-riders, climbed a mountain, or fought six dragons, your questions have to wait in line." She added onto the end of that, "Behind mine."
Few moved. For her part, Galadriel looked animated, as if delighted by Lusis' candor. Her great Elfking's blue-silver gaze explored the ceiling for a moment, as if he'd left something up there, for instance, his facility at maintaining that fabricated pleasantry he wore in gatherings like these. When he looked up at Lusis, he did so by degrees: first down and to the right of her, with his eyelashes low, then he shifted and his long body leaned back at the hip as he glanced at her. He looked impressed. "Lusis, this is the Council of Departing. It is also known as the Council of the West. They witness the last great strongholds of our kind. Eithahawn has been host to them as I toured the vast holdings of Mirkwood. And now select among the remaining leaders of the elves in Middle Earth have been assembled to meet these Emissaries, our guests," he paused a heartbeat, "from the West."
Oh. She turned slowly to the tall elves behind her. Closest to her was a very tall, snowy elf. He was so colourless that it was startling. He looked like solid marble. She glanced around at the others. They were all dressed in floor-length hooded-cloaks – shirred velvet, but in a style that was not familiar to her. The man closest to her took down his hood with long fingers and he was stunning. Tallest of the Emissaries. His hair the colour of blameless lily, and eyes that were, she swore, the colour of sea ice. Behind him was an elf with thick and starkly black hair, like ink against the paper whiteness of his skin. His eyes were the bright colour of a copper coin. The final guest was a tall woman. She had rings of golden hair, a delicate, heart-shaped face, and cheeks and lips like pale peonies. But her eyes were no nonsense – a deep blue at their extremity, they grew more colourless the nearer the soft oblong of her pupil. Apart from her eyes, she might have looked sweet. But they were fierce.
These strangers all wore circlets, but they were unlike anything in Middle Earth. Metal, but filmy and gossamer, in designs that were both radiant by nature and foreign. There was one in silver, one of copper, and one of shining gold. They were incredibly refined. Before them, she felt more rough-hewn and barbaric than usual. But also more capable of brutal decision. She stepped back and eased minutely between them and the Elfking.
They inclined their heads as one.
The Elvenking's voice remained light. "There is a visitor for each among the Three Kindred."
"The Teleri," said the blond woman elf, and her voice rolled with the soft shush of waves.
"The Noldor," sparked the black-haired man. And one of his dark brows rose playfully.
The colourless one finished in a voice like spring wind itself, "The Vanyar," the great ghostly elf laid a hand full of more of that unfamiliar filmy jewelry onto his chest, "I am Loss. My Noldor friend is Osp. Our Teleri companion is Glir."
She murmured, "They have short names in the West."
"When I was born," the ghost elf's head moved slowly over to the right, and his accent was so thick that it whirred underneath like leaves gusting on a breeze, "there were not names."
For the first time in her life, Lusis managed something approaching elvish doll-face. She astonished herself by, on the same day, and the same hour, very nearly pivoting around to face her King in the way an elf would. "Well, isn't that fascinating."
The Elfking inhaled a steadying breath, and she caught a hint of something like anxiety in his eyes when he looked at her again. That was enough to mobilize her.
"It's wonderful to meet the Council of the West, my King, but we are in Middle-Earth, and there is business at hand. Pardon me for insisting on this, but does anyone else know they are here?"
Galadriel ducked close beside her, to study her serious face and large dark eyes. "Their travels are a closely kept secret, Yellow Istari. Do you fear for them?"
She looked at the Lady and inclined her head, "I protect elves."
"And what about Men?" Galadriel's beauteous expression warmed. "Dwarves? Little Hobbits?"
"If they're innocent and in my path, they have my protection," Lusis told her without hesitation, even though she didn't know what a Hobbit really was. "But when you are in Mirkwood, my Lady, you are with the ones that my heart calls my family, and my people."
Her eyes glittered with surprise, "Why is that?"
"When I came here, I was at my most desperate. My life was being strangled out of me. No one I knew, or had known, could help my sorry case, great Lady. These elves owed me nothing, and through," she glanced over her shoulder at the Kindred and said, "bravery, bloodshed, and brilliance, they won me back my life." She opened her arms and looked at Galadriel. "They saved me, and let me walk free in the world."
"There is something about him," said the shining princess of the Galadrim. She spoke from close beside Lusis and just slightly bent because, though Lusis was tall, they were not of a height. It was surprising to Lusis that the Lady Galadriel looked so interested and engaged, as if curiosity was her habit. The woman's low, soft voice said, "Learning him is a form of art. There is some stroke of discovery, of creation, about him that puts a lie to any theory of… allotments within our kind, allotments of grace, some greater, some lesser, or so I have always believed. In my first days looking upon him, he was but a heartfelt prince. He was quiet and observant in those days, and very gentle. I saw in him the beauty of the Vanyar, the intelligence esteemed of my own kind, and the freedom of the Teleri." She looked aside at the Elfking who stepped back to hear word from an Elite at the side of the room. The King turned to the Three Kindred and spoke to them in an elvish language Lusis hadn't heard before. Galadriel finished, "And I find in that, great hope, Lusis Buckmaster. What do you find in it?"
"Great change," she told the Lady and nodded.
Galadriel straightened away and her lovely head rose. She was pleased. "We must speak again when events aren't so… pressing, friend of Thranduil's, and now, friend of my own." Her pale hands and perfectly maintained nails reached out and smoothed the fallen shoulder of Lusis' cloak back into position. She leaned close, and her expression became quite serious, "Do not be afraid to speak your mind among us, different as you are. In the end, there is no other lamp for guidance in the world. Do not snuff yours for the foxfire of others, no matter how magnificent."
Lusis' eyes widened. "Lady, why can't I see their fires?"
"They lived in the light of the Two Trees for an Age. Now they must hide their merits behind their storm-cloaks, lest they overwhelm us all." Her pale brows rose.
She wasn't joking. Lusis braced herself. She whispered, "Have they come to claim you?"
Galadriel exhaled, "Perhaps. Slowly… in ways that are not forceful. Yet. They come… to size the remains of the population, to learn who will be joining them, and know the natures of those people. We go into their territories, their culture, you must remember." Her great blue eyes glanced over the unfamiliar cut of the robes these men wore, with silvery cords of metal no thicker than an eyelash patterning through their fabric and glowing softly. She took a breath that lifted her shoulders, and smoothed her glinting sleeve of dress with her flawless hands. "All elves are their elves. Except, they fear, The Last Elves. We. We hold-outs from the West. We exiles, some. They come to judge the difficulty of the task of incorporating us as we have become. We are told that many messages have travelled the water, out of concern for us – their kin. But… perhaps they also come in search of some sign of what other fires burn in this place. Fires powerful enough to keep us here." She glanced down, her blonde lashes low, "As if the beauty of this world could not, itself, hold us enthralled."
"As we have become?" Lusis felt herself frown. She tried to keep pace with the much taller woman's patrol, around and around in this far edge of the room. Gliding. Throwing her light on the walls and Lusis. "What does it mean?"
"Wild. Warlike." She laid a hand on her own chest.
"Excuse me, my Lady?" Lusis blinked at her in her cascade of silver. "They called you wild and warlike?" What must they think of humans? Lusis pointedly didn't look at them. She made for a row of shining trays in the room, laid out along the wall on a natural stone outcropping smoothed to luscious glossiness. There were no chairs, but, on looking up, she noted that one wall was carved deep with rows of benches like drawings she'd seen of 'lecture halls' in Gondor, in spite of the fact the elves she knew only ever seemed to sit about in mixed company. They preferred to stand and move around and few of them were still for long.
Galadriel's pale hands reached for a vessel of silver, and Lusis poured the grand Lady a cup of water and held the cup aloft. It was the finest cut of crystal she had ever seen. Gingerly, she handed it to the Lady of Lorien, who promptly poured her a cup as well. "No it was not me they thought warlike, young Yellow Istari." She looked aside at where the Elfking reappeared in the room and came to a stop wordlessly looking at the Council of the West.
Speaking in their minds.
"Can you hear them?"
"At some distance," said the Mithril-silver Lady. Then her eyes widened at the thought of this innocent misbehavior, "Are we eavesdropping?"
Lusis' brows drew down and she turned to the Lady Galadriel slowly. "The Elfking-"
"Thranduil," said the Lady quietly.
"Uh, yes. The Elfking-"
Her pink lips curved into a playful smile, "Goodness. He will forget his name."
The woman wasn't anything Lusis had been brought to expect, she sucked a steading breath and said, "He… told me his wife was mischievous. You strike me as the same. Is it possible you're friends?"
"Ah," now she brightened like a lamp. "Lethroneth, my spy from this place, she told me of you, and that you will protect him."
"Yes, I will. He protected me first," Lusis nodded.
"If you are his friend," the elf Lady bent over her and the smell of sweet-grass rose to untamed perfection in the room, "do not let him forget his name when I am gone."
Lusis felt a sudden gasp in her chest. "You're leaving with them?" She'd only just met this woman, and, already, the thought of her going into the West left her with an empty ache.
Galadriel saw this and her effortless expression shifted. She inhaled, her brows drew up in that way that spoke of sudden sadness. She set down her cup and Lusis reached out and folded her tanned hand around the great Lady's. Galadriel recovered. Her free hand came up to lay over the decades of scars that had just reached out to steady her. She looked at an old wound in Lusis' palm. "When I was newly married I left home, husband, and the hearths of my kind to search for your Elfking. During the time of Dragons in the North, he was feared lost – you may not know this. I learned of this. And I did remember him, that beautiful young man of quick wit, and quicker temper. I am told we were so lovely, and that was why we would be seated together at arrangements – often above his station, but the elves love beauty. His father was not a noble. No one would speak to him, but I was beside him at nearly every function. We were a pair of lilies in the same water. So I did. As I look at memory… I realize that a wildly different way of thinking is not a failing, it is not a fearsome sign, if it also does good. I believe you also understand that."
Lusis told her, "I love that about him."
"You love a lot about him," she smiled in cheerful reply. "And he trusts you. So I ask you to remember his name to him. Even one such as he is must be close to another. How will he grieve? I must go to the West. I must go ahead of my husband, and my friend."
Lusis' chin rose. He'd already lost so much. "I… I'll keep an eye on him for you. As long as I can."
Galadriel released her hand and pushed back a stray lock of Lusis' hair, "A very long time. But the favour I have come to ask is more complex than that, Yellow Istari. Will you hear me out?"
Elves. Full of favours. Giving, and getting. "I will hear you out." She smiled at the Lady.
"I am grateful," the Lady inclined her head. "In truth… my love and my friend have never gotten along. The relationship is more badly fractured than I had thought. But when I leave, I will go without either. You see, they are both Sinda, and I… there are things I must do to prepare for them. This is less pressing for Celeborn, perhaps. He is a Teleri noble from a line of nobles. And he is wonderful," she smiled with her pale teeth this time, unable to contain herself, "They will hail him. But Thranduil... is not a noble. He is rarely biddable and obedient. He is not controllable."
By this time Lusis was smiling as she nodded in agreement. "He has a lot of strong points."
The Lady had to turn her slender body right and look away to keep from laughing. Lusis glanced from Eithahawn's bow toward the King and how he peeked, somewhat fretfully, at the snow-white Vanyar. The King nearly touched Eithahawn to calm hi
m, before he stepped away. He closed his hands behind his back.
"Celeborn and Thranduil should be a comfort to each other," Galadriel said softly. Her head tipped left, and her voice sounded sad. "But neither of them have enough tempering in them. My husband is proud and strong, but he can be austere. And then there is Thranduil."
Lusis chuckled, which was a most alien voice in a room full of elves. The Elfking looked at her and some of the tension drained from his long body. His voice carried in the dome of room, when, at a distance, he summoned her. "Lusis Buckmaster, I am sorry to separate you from our guests, particularly as you've had no other chance to meet the Lady." He took a single step forward, which all in the room witnessed, and stopped himself at once. In formal proceedings a King was not moved by others, they were expected to be moved by him.
Galadriel inclined her head to him. Yes.
In answer to this, Thranduil bent his body a little to the glowing Lady. This was more than Lusis had ever seen of him.
He continued, "I have need of you. It is the business of the Kingdom." Then he turned from Lusis entirely, and took several slow steps for an intersecting hall.
Time was short. Lusis looked back at Lady Galadriel. Her voice was low and hurried, "Lady, it might be a long time before you see your husband and the Elfking again, once you leave. I'll do my best to… help them understand each other's strengths. I suspect they know all about one another's weaknesses."
Galadriel bowed her golden head in parting, and Lusis smiled. "You have my word."
How was it possible to miss someone you'd just met? But she regretted that she left the Lady of Lorien, perhaps never to see her sunny face – the picture of gladness – again.
She went to the Elfking's side and he said some sibilantly gorgeous words in a language that didn't sound like Sindarin, at least from what she'd heard of it. The Vanyar's snow-coloured eyes found her, momentarily, and he replied in a raincloud voice.
The Elfking exhaled as they turned and went through an arched tube of hall that was some six feet wide, and twenty four tall. She could feel the weight of old and rolling orogeny over her head. Where they were now was deeper in the earth than she was used to. The top of the cavern was lit by long blown glass tubes that ended in teardrops of fire light. Long fibers of pure white wick ran down into them. It was hard to see that from so far below. The walls were inlaid with blue stone butterflies and the flying red and golden leaves from which the Kingdom had taken its colours. Other halls intersected this one, but they stayed along the straightaway for a very long way. Two minutes of walking, and he paused to look down at her with his silvery eyes.
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