For her part, Lusis ignored them. The night glowed above her head and it was full of stars. She had no idea why they made her feel the way they did, like separated brethren. And then they were in a wide room whose roof was glassed over. There were elves there – Elites – and Thranduil went into a second room with them. He passed out of sight among them, Lusis was content to follow until she saw the long layers of white coat come out, folded over the Clothier's long arms. The elf woman's blond brows went up as she glided past Lusis. "Perhaps a moment? Unless you are intimates, and I overstep, Yellow Istari."
"No," Lusis couldn't fight down the blush. "No, you don't."
Merilin came to glance into the domed room at her. He was braiding his dark brown hair out of his face. "Istari," he gave a head bow.
"Merilin, what's happening?"
"We're leaving for Lake Township."
"Now?"
"Very soon. Your packs are ready for travel." He finished the plait and wove it into a second braid at the back of his head.
"Why are we sneaking out?"
"He will tell you."
She exhaled and turned to Redd, "I very much doubt it."
It was seconds before the Elfking appeared. They were still strapping on his left vambrace when Thranduil came back through the door. He took over the job with a deft hand, "There is work to be done in this land, as you know. Aside from which… they are beginning to ask certain questions, Yellow Istari – the Council of the West. There is no such thing as an omission, or half a truth. They see through any machination we may use to protect ourselves and others. Lord Loss… he can oblige a mind to complete accuracy. Only his love of good keeps him from forcing such matters."
Lusis opened her mouth and shut it again.
"Oh," she couldn't imagine the depth and complexity of the King's secrets, "He needs to stay away from you." she told him.
"One does not tell a Vanyar Lord his business. Not when one is a-" he didn't say the word 'Moriquendi' but he did add, "Elf of the Grey Twilight."
Lusis glanced over the thronging of Elites who laid his cloak on his shoulder and proceeded to lift his fine, long hair into place. Merilin stepped aside for the Clothier, who folded his robes and pushed the King's hands out of his way whenever he tried to interfere. He seemed used to this, as he allowed it without complaint.
He drew in on Lusis as the Clothier pulled the hood of his deep crimson robe up around him, "It is of no true consequence whether they return to the Undying Lands with yet another Sinda soldier, Lusis Buckmaster. I will be another of legions of such – tall, blond, grey-eyed. Sinda tend to be of a type. And to ferry back a soldier who has been called a King? The only value there is that he can serve to show the Moriquendi that they must be meek." He stepped aside as the elf, Merilin, caught hold of the filigree of one of the glass panes above and rolled the glass down into what had appeared to be solid stone.
Elven hands reached to gently touch the King's clothes into arrangement, when they were already impeccable. Lusis understood it. She wanted to be close to him too. To offer his heart, which could no longer bleed for its own despair, some warm spark of comfort.
He gestured at Lusis and the Clothier set a long woolen coat over her shoulders.
"Protect him," breathed the – yes – blonde and grey-eyed Sinda woman. She handed cloaks among them and said a quiet. "Safeguard him." Lusis stared at the beautiful elf as she withdrew. It reminded her that other Sindar, and Noldor like Dorondir, had accepted Thranduil as a King. She gritted her teeth and looked out in the chill drafts of autumn air from above them.
He was a King in many minds. For many reasons.
The King strapped on extra weapons. "Everything I am presents, to them, a challenge. There are better things to collect from among us."
She felt her head rise. Did it have something to do with her? It couldn't have. Though… perhaps the Council held a dim opinion of him. He was a Grey Elf. He had become more than a friend. He was her true North. Likewise, Lusis knew she'd have crossed an ocean if Legolas Thranduilion had sworn it was essential to Silvan survival. She would fight to the bitter end to safeguard Eithahawn. And here she was fleeing the Halls to escape the Council of the West. It should have said everything to him, and maybe it did. When the Elfking shot out into the night through the window, Lusis followed on his heels without question. She didn't believe he was less than worthy.
"And Lord Elrond?" she braced a foot, reached down, and got Elsenord out. They both helped bigger Remee. Rangers worked together as a matter of habit.
"There is still the pressing need to find the enemy in the lands to the East." The King glanced over Lusis' Rangers.
"Redd," Lusis gave up trying to pull him out and exhaled slowly. "I don't know if you're going to fit. Maybe," she set her hands on her hips, "they should push from the other side?"
Redd, this close to the dome window, had his head poking out, he was so tall. So it was not difficult to see him flush and look uncomfortable. His voice was low and pleading. "Don't ask that, Lusis."
The King's head did a quick glide, right to left, though his eyes didn't stray. He exhaled in the chilly air. "Redd Ayesir… I can fit through that window in armour… how can it be you cannot fit through it, at all?"
When Redd gave a helpless shrug, the windows to either side of him bounced. The Elfking gave a sudden and mellifluous huff of humour. He had to walk away to contain himself. He travelled down the sheer granite edge of this stone outcrop above the Halls. He came back again only after distracting himself smoothing his dark crimson cloak – which needed no smoothing – against his long thighs.
"Redd… dear child… it would take days to dismantle the iron frames of those windows, for they were forged in my father's time, against the ingress of dragons. As you cannot fit, you will have to leave by way of the stables. Take pains not to be seen."
"Yes, my King," he gave a little bow through the window, which nearly dissolved the Rangers, and left Lusis looking at her boots.
"See you soon, Redd," she said brightly.
"Yes, Captain." He ducked back in through the thick and heavy glass, which Merilin rolled into place and sealed again. Aric sagged to his brother, his age and occupation wiped away by the sudden blast of laughter.
"Shush, you witless child," Lusis grinned as Remee clapped a hand over his mouth and tried not to find this hysterical. Elsenord was trying to walk it off.
Maybe the brisk night air could cool their humour? It smelled of winter cold, and the distinctive sparking that the air made on skin when snow was close. They were higher up in the old mountain orogeny than Lusis had expected. It was uncomfortably cold. She looked left, to where the King had been, and saw his cloak billowing away from his long legs. He glanced back at her, went to the edge of the windy escarpment, and simply stepped off. He fell out of sight at once.
She tore away from Remee, who had been leaning on her shoulder, so fast that he nearly toppled over. She ran to the edge of the outcropping and braked. The King was fine. In her heart, she knew he would be, but… she'd seen him insensate with dragon's blood a handful of nights ago. She could be forgiven for worrying, probably more easily than she could be for wanting to aim a smack at the back of his inconsiderate head, dropping out of sight that way.
He paused where he was heading down a set of steps carved deep in the rock face. The stair was covered along its stretch by the granite of the eroded mountain, and so he was sheltered from view. Lusis hopped down to the stone landing and followed him.
They emerged through an iron gate and walked out of the fissure via a not so accidental rock-cairn. Lusis admired the ingenuity involved in this trickery. She'd been out on the land many times in this stone, and even scaled and crossed over these hills to keep her climbing sharp. She hadn't realized this passage was here. The Rangers made it into the woods below in under twenty minutes. It would have taken much longer – she knew from experience – without the hidden stair.
The troop and King went South and d
eeper into the woods, and not along the Forest River, in fact. That was how they encountered Redd. He had come from the stone stables built where part of the great rock that housed the elves had formed an outcropping that was not flush with the ground. The stone was now braced on pillars. Lusis could hear horses whickering from within.
Redd was standing beside the rock face, his hood up to cover his namesake hair, and his earnest dark eyes scanning the wood. She saw him, gave the nearby branch a shake, and his eyes found the motion. After it had stilled she stepped just into sight of him. He made an indirect path to join them. "Why is this so clandestine? Do we believe they have spies everywhere in a world as close as this?"
"Every mind is a spy if you can force its secrets like forcing a lock," Lusis looked at the gathering clouds that began to cluster around the moon, and told him. "It may be that we are his only guards tonight, though, almost certainly, Merilin is making himself scarce."
"He'll be leading his section to relieve Arasell's in Lake Township within the hour," the King said quietly. "She arrives from along the river, without knowing we are abroad." He led them onward. "Other incidental members of my staff know well enough to stay clear of them."
"Will they interfere with us?" Lusis fell in at the King's broad shoulder as they passed more even ground. "We are fighting an evil in the land."
"They have no interest in this land but our removal from it, Lusis." He paused, mid-step, at a soft woodland noise, but then turned, his blue-silver eyes gliding across to the open green, and down, before he kept going. "Essentially, they are from the West and they have never been here, except to wake in all their glory, under the stars, and to leave. Do you believe that breeds a desire for involvement?"
She was too surprised to simply accept this news. "But this force is attacking the elves."
He inhaled deeply. "The problems of this land, Lusis, are the problems of Men. We make them our own only by disobedience to the Three Kindred." And he was mindful of the Buckmaster Rangers behind him. "In your Keep, I did hear protests made by the people of the North against the elves, your brother, Kirstman Buckmaster, spoke them. It is felt that we abandon the humans in a world where much chaos foments, and Gondor is far in the South."
"I didn't realize," she admitted to him. "I was too wrapped in my own misery." She still couldn't recall the featureless days directly following the death of her father.
"Understandably." His silver-blond hair billowed against her shoulder as he ducked under tree limbs too high to give her worry. The King murmured, "But we are all Erusen of the North, both the elves of Mirkwood and the Men of Northern expanses. Our wide spaces and icy reaches are burdened by the hordes fleeing Mordor, those that find strength in the worm-heads of the cold regions, and those who crave the bottomless gold of Erebor for their funding. Evil is a business among them. The industry of it is their unifier. The man now leading your Keep does not appreciate that we of Mirkwood are no less abandoned by the emptying of Rivendell and Lorien than they are."
She noted, "Because even before I arrived, the Buckmasters thought you were all leaving. I failed to recognize this sentiment. I was-"
"In mourning," he stopped beside her and the great aura that he now occupied, shifted weight. "Your father died, Lusis-sell. That is a time when there is nothing else that one can see. The world is as invisible as air. Aside from this… my people have known no peace in their own land, this beautiful place so full of woe, for several Ages. They are unready to leave. And they have won this forest in blood. I will not allow them to be forced."
Redd glanced up at the first pecks of rain to make it through the heavy branches above. "Elvenking, you say the elves of the West gain little by you. But… I cannot believe that. Tonight, your own words to your elven people held clues. It seems that you prepare for succession in the Halls… in case they take you. So will you allow them to force you to leave?" He stepped over a downed tree whose rotted bark the King had adroitly darted onto, and by. Everyone else in their number picked up their pace to circumnavigate the deadfall. On the other side of the deer-path, the King waited.
He stopped along a stretch of trees made blue-green by the full moon, and he turned so that the wide, dark ovals of his pupils beheld Lusis from nearby. "It is you they want. I am just your vehicle." His head bent slowly, and his great eyes closed. "It has been asked. They do not believe we can be separated."
Heat flashed over Lusis so that even her shoulders and arms felt warm. Her fingers tingled with shame that her constancy had somehow done this to him.
She felt cold inside, and the unease of it lasted for the remainder of the night.
They jogged through most of the night and next day. It was well into dark the day after, when they made their way to a clutch of elven houses, built amid truly massive trees. They stood suspended on elf steel brackets from the great red trunks. Wooden stairs led to the forest floor. The King looked suddenly less abstracted and more pleased. He took three steps into the relative clearing at the frosted feet of such giants, and the white elk loped out of ferns and stopped before him. Thranduil extended a pale hand and the elk put its muzzle under it.
An elf came out of the trees. An Elite. She bowed to the King and indicated the house. "There is a Patrol of elves in the trees around us, my King, and the Lord is resting."
The Elvenking didn't miss a beat, "As we have need of rest."
She told him, "It shall be done."
Elrond was in the larger of the several buildings. Inside, there was a circular central fire, and a cooking fire along the back wall. Lusis came through the front door, bleary and sore, and saw three more Elites bustling inside. One of them lifted a hatch in the floor, walked down, and returned with an armful of dried wood from there. They'd built in a storage room underneath the suspended building. Another carried mulled wine from the fire to set beside a stack of flat breads that steamed in the gust from the door. The Lord sat covered in a blanket, happily spreading a mix of nut butter and diced candied cherry onto bread. He glanced to the left and saw Thranduil.
"Your Men are exhausted, Elvenking."
Then Thranduil paused and looked at the Lord before him. "Have I done you some wrong?"
Elrond laid down the knife, his deep grey eyes widened curiously, and he very nearly looked innocent. He puzzled this reaction out and concluded, "Perhaps… I should call you friend."
The great white-golden elf turned away, "Perhaps you should."
Lusis got her exhausted troop inside. "Is there water, good Elf?" she asked the nearby Elite, and the woman gestured at a pot near the back of the room. Lusis considered it and then the long row of rounded beds along the walls. They ran from the ground floor along rows of pillars, to about six feet from the peaked roof. The place was designed to sleep two sections with ample room on the floors. In spite of that, the building was not terribly large. Lusis exhaled. "Do not let the King or Lord from this room without us. We need water. And sleep." Water, they hadn't had in over an hour, sleep they hadn't had in a day and a half.
At the end of the room, she drew up water for her tired men. She brought some to where Remee had already fallen on an oval cot, asleep. Waking up dehydrated was hard on the body. She let her troop lie along the wall. Icar was already sound asleep as she passed him.
When she reached him, the King stood beside Elrond. He was speaking, "And you're well."
She scanned the reddish-blue flame inside of the Lord and decided he was better off than when it had been low and violet. She would feel better when it was back to its normal tall arch of ruddy gold. He was unusual among elves. Or his fire was.
The Lord Elrond sipped his mulled wine. "Yes. I do feel I slowly recover. Perhaps this spell cannot do harm over the long term…. Is this what it feels like, I wonder, to fall ill as a human does?" He glanced over the elf before him and said, "It is rare… to see you in such extremity, Thranduil. What news have you?"
"You were on your way here and did not observe this. I have declared Eithahawn Auron
ion and Legolas, should he ever appear to sign his lovely name, to be co-rulers at succession, as of the opening of this Lasbelin festival."
The Lord Elrond fumbled his buttering knife. His great eyes peered up. "You did what?"
The Elfking's chin rose, "This sentiment is hardly a secret."
"He is not your son." Elrond pointed out. "His father was your squire and carried armour for-"
"He is my son."
There was a long silence during which these two men stared at one another.
"Legolas will not agree to it," Elrond exhaled and motioned at the King. "Though it is reassuring to see that it is not solely for the rest of us that you make trouble, Thranduil."
"Legolas will agree to it," said the King. "You do not know his love of family." Elrond began to inhale to speak, but the King quickly added, "Of which Eithahawn has always been one."
Elrond leaned back in his seat and accepted this. "Very well."
"The festival will run for three days," said the Elvenking. "It is a time of great distraction, and our best cover. However, we shall be missed before it ends. We cannot rest here long. It is known by my Elites, and Lord Loss will easily be able to find that out."
Lusis felt herself scowl. When you were a Ranger, there was never enough sleep. "How long do we have here to rest?"
"Four to six hours," said the Elfking softly, "At most." He pushed back the screen of limpid silvery blond that fell across his bowed face.
Now Lusis sipped the water she'd carried with her. "You need to rest too, my King." She had no idea how they were going to bring Elrond along, but she was determined he would travel well, and remain healthy, even if the Rangers had to carry him on a litter. Though she suspected the method was much more likely to involve the white stag.
The Elfking's chin sank down in agreement. He was too worn by these last weeks to even bother with comment. Within minutes, the Elfking was out of his armour and curled on one of the pallet-like oval beds. Lusis, having judged that the stout door was more of a risk than the thick and enclosed walls and ceilings of the rest of this space, lay out on the bed beside him, but closer to the door. She didn't know a thing about the outside world before she became aware again, five hours later. Her head had been full of whispers.
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