"Tell me what you think of them, Istari?"
"They are fine elves," she glanced up at him, sober, in spite of the unfamiliarity of the elven dress that she wore. "But you and yours are just as fine."
"The Vanyar, Loss…." Thranduil sucked in a deep breath and then his brows swept up. "I can feel the force of him in these halls no matter where I am. The others are little better."
"That's probably beyond his ability to control," she shrugged, "as you can't dim the splendor that lives inside of you… and so his grandeur doesn't matter to me, as long as he and the others remember whose Halls these are."
He stopped and looked at her. "Do you not understand, Lusis Buckmaster? Their purity is far in excess of my own. Their incorruptibility. They are spotless with power." He said this in a heatless way, and with a feathery, weightless voice.
She stepped up to him. "And why do you think this world has ruined something in you? I'd venture you and yours, Legolas, Eithahawn, all your elves, have stood against greater Darkness than they can imagine, and for Ages. Compared to that, what good is untested virtue?" Lusis scoffed and continued walking without him.
Behind her back, the Elvenking lowered his head and allowed the weight of his fears to prickle across his skin. Glorfindel had shaken him to his very core. He would rather die than guard a door for the remains of forever. He wasn't a compliant being. He wasn't the great and yet tractable man they sought. He was in every margin of him, a King. He loved this world. He deeply loved his home, and the ghostly memory of his wife here. This was his life because he'd chosen it after it had chosen him. This.
Was it wrong?
Lusis glanced at the many constellations of firelight above her. "Well, I disagree. Even if living in this world had marred your innocence in some way, it would have been far less virtuous to let the evils of this world rampage across all the lands, unchecked." She lashed out her sword, nearly as fast as an elf, "If you fought them, they were meant to be fought by you. If you lost something, it was meant to be lost. I do believe that Vanyar elf never set a toe on these lands to be tested until Middle-Earth was washed by the tears of Sindar, Silvan, exiles, and Men, and wiped clean again. That is, unless you've had Council of the West visitors in the past."
"We have not," he drifted along and listened to her closely, drafting on her wake.
She spun her sword in air, a graceful silver arch she passed over behind her back, "Then virtue is only part of goodness. The rest must be some other mixture of grit, suffering, determination, failure, and triumph that he may know nothing about. For everything life snatched from you, this world gave you something in exchange. Great knowledge is not considered a form of grace by your kind. Men feel the same about great ignorance."
He said from behind her, "They do not weigh what I have done here."
"That's a mistake," she put her sword away and slowed until she could walk beside him. "Each mistake is a point of exploit. It can be used to help them do the right things, Elfking."
There was a long pause before his eyes became downcast and he said, "You sound like my wife."
Lusis looked away at the intricate butterflies along the wall, each pulling nearly imperceptible bars and musical arrangements behind them, "I'm sorry… if it hurt you."
"No," he said somewhat hollowly. "I'd rather remember her. It's… better that way. It's…."
She reached back, found his fingers, and wrapped her hand around them. No one should be stranded with such desperate sadness. She released him, as was proper, when they reached the outpouring at the end of the hall. Here, there was a large cavern with growing trees inside. It was on the other side of the old stone hill under which they'd just walked. The sun streamed through bubbled and irregular glass inclusions in the stone as thick as her arm was long. In the sun, seated in a very curious chair, with his long legs curled under him, and under a blanket of red and gold, was Lord Elrond of Rivendell. He was paler than she remembered of his somewhat humanly-pink skin. His dark blue eyes were shut, as if he dozed with the great tome he wrote in open in his lap.
Raineth stood watch over him, as did several Mirkwood Elite guards that Lusis had only seen in passing and didn't know except in seeing them in contact with Ewon and the others. But they seemed to know her, by the sudden flicker of quickly suppressed smiles that passed through the Elites along the walls. Lusis felt the tightness in her chest ease. "Where is Dorondir? I would have expected him here."
"Eithahawn had put him in House Arrest."
She glanced up at the King, "What?"
"Yes," the Elfking told her, "for failing to carry me out of the slaughter of Orcs with Lord Elrond. And so, when I asked for him to report his travel to me, shortly after I arrived, he was brought in with a silver chain bound to a steel bracer."
Lusis snorted at the notion. "If I recall correctly, you were having a relaxing time. It would have been impolite for him to interrupt. Elves are not impolite as a rule."
Within that pillar of light to which her eyes were still adjusting, the Elfking's gaze brightened. He favoured her with a dimpled smile. "He has been released," the Elfking told her. "He should be here."
"He's gone," Elrond's deep eyes opened slowly, and his sonorous voice sounded a low note in the cavern, "I had a sudden craving for pine-nut flax bread with generous butter."
"That boy cannot seem to do enough for you," the Elfking walked to join the Lord of Rivendell, and lifted the book from his lap to the table. "Let's have wine."
The Lord of Rivendell's long hair was unbound, a mass of dark tresses over the top rail of the high-backed chair in which he sat. The Elfking simply eased it along the floor to a low table some feet from them, and it rolled because the legs were fitted into depressions in a small wooden platform onto which wooden wheels were fitted. It was a strange, but convenient arrangement. When they stopped, the Elfking pulled a rest from under the chair and Elrond gratefully lowered his legs onto it.
Lusis reached for the Lord of Rivendell's chest and her King intercepted her hand, folding his own around it. "Yes, this was the way it was to be. You were to heal him and use me. But that cannot happen now. We can but hope that the enemy believes I slipped their trap of my own ingenuity."
Lusis saw a flash of those eyes, again, in her mind, as she freed the fire of the King.
Lord Elrond reached out and touched the small platter of various flavours of jams and butters, "You've been known to be ingenious in the past."
"And you for being resolute." Said the Elfking, "And you will not waver in the face of this attack either, until such a time as our good Istari can do… what it is she does, to restore you."
"Does what you do hurt a great deal?" Elrond's pale face found her with some humour.
"I… I don't know," she took his hand because it was trembling.
The Elfking noted. "She is too full of mercy, Lord Elrond. It is only possible to suffer this if she is ignorant to the degree of the effect."
Sometimes he was a very annoying man, her King.
He poured two cups of wine, glanced over Lusis, and thought the better of it. "The Yellow Istari met the Lady of Lorien just now."
"Oh," Elrond's great large eyes found her, "perhaps she is in love by now?"
Lusis glanced up at the Elfking. Then her eyes slid over to Dorondir as he drifted to the table and laid a generous helping of several types of thick, cake-like, nut breads onto the cloth. The slices smelled rich and steamed, freshly made. "My thanks," murmured Lord Elrond. Lusis stepped aside, turned, and without warning, threw her arms around the barrel of the elf's chest.
Dorondir nearly backed into a planter before the King called for him to stop.
This was probably the very first elf Lusis had ever spoken to in the world, and she'd come to care about his wellbeing no differently than she did the safety of her own troop. She released him and winced up into his handsomely astonished face. "I'm sorry for the surprise, Dorondir. I had heard things that caused me to worry."
He blinked his
large green eyes at her and managed to look very young. "Lusis-Istari, please save your worry for my Lord and my King."
"The King is well, and I'll be dealing with the ailing Lord," she glanced back at his low and crimson flame, "as soon as my King turns his back for a sufficiently long period of-"
The Lord Elrond chuckled as he selected two white slices of pine-nut bread and a spread of butter that was speckled with sugar. His voice rumbled, "You will not be allowed to do such a thing, Istari. Truly, you are as he espoused."
The Elfking's hand nudged her at the elbow and then curled under her arm so lightly she could scarcely feel him through the fabric, "Come, Lusis-sell. Eat something. A body cannot endure on so little nourishment." He drew her to the table and guided her to the seat across from Lord Elrond out of his reach. The smoke-coloured eyes of the Elflord saw this with amusement.
"Why can't I heal you?" She glanced back at the Elfking, who had been withdrawing, and he came back to stand just behind her. This was due to his reading the type of glance she'd given as 'Come here' or 'Follow', though it was possible he thought she would lunge across the table and simply 'fix' whatever had befallen Elrond. "And how quickly do you think I can make this change, anyway?"
"Heartbeats." The Elfking said to her then. "It was but three heartbeats before all the taint of it flowed out of my body. Then I fell, insensate, atop the Istari at my feet." He shifted weight and gave her a look.
It was embarrassing. She occupied herself by taking a pinkish slice of bread made with the juice of cherries and spooning some mixed-berry compote and cream onto it. She waggled it in air a little. The stuff was heavy and built like thick pastry. "It… it took longer… where I was."
The elves looked at one another, and even Dorondir drifted closer.
"Where were you?" asked the Lord Elrond.
"Wherever he went." She made a head gesture at the King. "And he went to a grey place."
"Twilight," Elrond said quietly. "The obsession of the Sinda, and why their eyes are so sure in the grey in-between that puzzles the rest of the world."
"Tell me. Tell me why you won't let me help you."
"Because," Elrond's brows rose, "right now, as we sit here, I can feel the pull of the East on me. It is a sure thing that the Elfking felt it too, at one time. The challenge of finding an explanation was simplified with both of us suffering the weight of it. Simple math."
"Triangulation." Said the Elfking. "Up until the point where you… did what you did." His brows drew down and he looked into his wine, unwilling to meet her gaze.
"You're angry." She guessed.
"I'm… not," the Elfking's soft bottom lip caught in his teeth and rolled out. "It's not anger. The task has become more difficult by your action… but I do not regret my restoration, Lusis Buckmaster. The Lord Elrond will not regret his own."
"But for now," the dark-haired elf's chin rose, and his deep voice rolled through the room, "for now I must remain in this affected state for long enough that we can use this pull I feel to guide us back to the wrongdoer."
"Something else happened to you on that mountain," Lusis said around cherry bread. The elves had a way of making bread taste like pound cake. If there was pound cake, she could imagine it would taste like premium sweetmeats. She glanced at the King, who was still stationed behind her and looking at her golden-threaded dark brown hair.
"I do not have a clear memory of it," the Elfking said. "We are better served trying to glean what the Lord remembers."
"Just taking messages," said Elrond quietly and then raised his right hand, "and this." On the heel of his hand, near the base of his thumb, was a small and discolored burn.
Lusis started to get up to go to the Lord, but the Elfking's irresistible mandate stayed her in her chair. Also, his long hand turned over in air before her so that she could see he had something very similar, a fading circle of burn on the pad of his pale hand, just under his index finger. "One might have been a coincidence, but a pair of these?"
"The delivery systems… would need to be very different." Lusis turned in her seat and tapped the King's hand with her fingertip. His skin was no longer angry with the burn, and there were no longer details to be seen. She looked at the anonymous and faded burn, hatefully, because she was sure what had befallen these great elves was no accident. "But they have in common, the North. Or so Lindir said. He said that, before you fell ill, my Lord, you had mail from messengers who smelled like winter. That means couriers like the people of Buckmaster Spur, or we Buckmasters ourselves." Her voice waggled a bit on that, and she looked at the King's pale, graceful hand, and thought of her father, and how livid he would be made by news like this.
"I would think so," Elrond admitted. "Thranduil, you were fighting dragons, were you not?"
"Yes, and one of the dragons carried me to the summits of Bregolnag where we began to strive against one another, mightily. She was a female of the winter breed, and bright. My thoughts are clear to the point where I cut away her head. But confusion overtook me then." He allowed his hand to be inspected by the curious Istari, and held it wordlessly still before her. "When I did come to, by then the cold was bitter. A killing cold. Night was drawing in. But I was yet adulterated on the snow, unaware of where I truly was, what Age I was in, and unable to rise. On the point of collapse, I used the dragon's blood for heat."
Elrond's mouth opened, and then eased shut around an exhalation. "You survived by way of setting one certainty of death against the other, old friend. Do you understand?"
"Yes," Thranduil's fingers moved. He squeezed Lusis' hand in his own. "And no. I had a strong prospect of rescue." His glance in Lusis' direction was thankful.
She turned his hand over again. "I can feel something there." Lusis pushed aside her little wood platter and extended her arm across the table to Elrond. "I won't break the spell. I swear, but…"
Elrond shook his head. "Istari, I am well warned. As the King has many times discussed with me, I am also our last lead. If we are truly serious about tracking this thing back to its place of origin, it falls to me to endure this a-"
The King snatched up Lord Elrond's hand and inspected it. He slid his fingertips along the burn, which caused Rivendell's Lord to press his lips in a line against pain.
"I can, indeed, feel an impression in your flesh. A mark, Lord Elrond." The King muttered. "An unstructured mark with raised edges."
Lusis stood at her seat, "Yes, and I was in a strong Northern gale with you, my King. I saw that it suppressed your fire. That light inside of you is held back by force. I saw it when I delivered you from it. But the effort must be colossal. The force, itself, tore at my touch. I protected the flame, and when it grew, it burst through the wind. Even I had to flee from it. It proved to me that it's not a natural thing that has befallen you. Your fires are meant to burn. What I don't understand is how the marks are still on you?"
"Like scars." The King released Lord Elrond's hand at last.
"Like a waxen seal," she looked up at Lord Elrond, suddenly. "Wait. With what do you open the mail?"
"A steel opener. Elven paper can produce a cut." The Lord shrugged slightly, and it was the most human motion that she'd ever seen in an elf. It was… strange. Elrond seemed, in a distant way, like Men. It was faint, but… she could see it.
The Elfking asked. "What was in the letter?"
Lord Elrond suddenly seemed startled. His brows rose and he prepared to set in with an explanation, and realized he had none. "Why," he glanced from his memory and looked up at the blond Sindar, "there was none. Just… just the envelope, empty. I remember looking at it after my head cleared, and feeling that I should not touch it."
"There is little enough in common between a dragon and a letter," said the Elfking. He nipped his bottom lip and then turned to Dorondir, to whom he extended a graceful hand.
Dorondir was Elrond's spy in Mirkwood, but elves were good, and spies selected for their ability to endure an inevitable crisis of loves – loyalty to two mast
ers, two elf cities. Dorondir bowed to the Lord, Elrond, and then to the Elfking. Then he took a flat leather packet from the inside of the cloak he wore. Wordlessly, he set it on the table.
The Elfking took Lusis' hand back from touching the paper.
Dorondir undid the white ribbon that closed the packet and took out an envelope and a thin sliver of silvery metal whose handle was shaped like a crow feather. He set both on the white cloth and backed away with his eyes on Lord Elrond.
"You took these from my office?" the Lord's powerful voice had quelled. He was taken aback.
Dorondir bowed low, "Lord's-seneschal Lindir stepped over these when he took you out, but… in the room this seemed the last thing you touched, along with the opener," he turned his head. "I took them because I so strongly believed that my King could figure this thing out, whether you woke or not." He straightened, set a hand on his chest, and swung it out to open to the Lord. His head remained bowed in surrender. That was part of what the gesture was. Helplessness to do anything but love and respect another.
He gave the same gesture to the Elvenking of the Halls and the King's head tipped softly. "Elrond, the true reason for a spy… is to see in him or her… the esteem for another power, another place. If the love is strong-"
"The house is worthy," Elrond sipped his wine and looked at the letter. "Good Thranduil… I'm not touching that thing again. I also advise you against it."
"But you forget that I have," he took and raised Lusis' unresisting hand. She managed her embarrassment. Truthfully, she didn't want it to mar the simple pleasure of holding the hand of the Elvenking, even though he meant the gesture as one-part for her restraint, and one-part for the protection she proffered. She would protect him. In the world, he was one of the very few who could hope to restrain her.
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