Without

By CinnamonGrrl

Part 16

Corinne woke early the next morning, but Haldir was already up and gone. She dressed in comfortable low-riding sweatpants and a t-shirt, tucking the cartouche into her bra for lack of pockets. As it was obvious the cartouche could materialize on her whenever it wanted, they’d deemed it best to simply carry it around. That way, at least, it would be wrapped in its linen nest and not touching her skin.

She explored the cottage but he was nowhere inside. A shabby stone path from the front door wandered through a mélange of animal habitats and ramshackle garden plots, and she followed it. Here was a massive beehive, there a stand of bean plants crawling haphazardly up some rickety poles ten feet high. Uneven rows of lettuce were thriving as they wove between and around gopher holes whose occupants poked their heads up to peruse Corinne as she walked by.

Most obvious of all were the cages. There were cages everywhere, of all sizes and shapes—some short and squat, some tall and slender, some tiny enough to only contain a sole petite creature, and some large enough to hold multiple elephants. All had a single thing in common, however: not a door was to be seen on any single one of them, and the animals who made them their homes wandered freely in and out.

Wide-eyed, Corinne walked the path until it petered out, and then strained until she heard faint voices. Following them, she came to a small clearing, paved with a primitive mosaic floor depicting two trees—one of green and silver, the other of gold and green. The wizard had rolled up the voluminous sleeves of his rusty tunic and was industriously swabbing out a rabbit hutch at the edge of the mosaic while Haldir leant against a tree and ’supervised’. The early sun peeping over the treetops lit his head like burnished gold, throwing his face into shadow, but there was no quelling the brilliance of his eyes, both fierce and soft as they fastened on her. “Doll-nîn,” he said quietly, a faint smile lifting the corner of his mouth.

“Morning, baby,” she said, going to him and sliding her arms around his waist. “Been explaining our problem?”

He nodded, and dropped a kiss on the crown of her ruddy head. “I have told him all I know, and all Dawn has told us; is there anything you would add?”

She gave his mind a quick search to learn what he’d said to Radagast and found he’d been pretty comprehensive. “Not really,” she replied. “All you’ve left out is…” she paused, biting her lip. Haldir hadn’t mentioned their conversation before they’d left Lothlórien, about how they were beginning to doubt they wanted to sever their bond. “Is how we might not want to end it,” she finished. “But then again, that might just be the cartouche talking. Trying to keep us from breaking up and ending the steady influx of energy we’re sending it.”

Once again a strong feeling of both resentment for the cartouche’s interference, as well as disbelief that her emotions could somehow be artificial, welled up in her so powerfully that she knew it had spilled over into Haldir’s mind, for she felt his answering emotions of agreement and love brush comfortingly back against her.

“I don’t want to lose this,” she thought to him with a tinge of desperation.

Radagast moved to a massive birdcage that stood well over twice the height of a Man. Like the hutch, it too had no doors or any other method of restraining its inhabitants, what seemed to be an entire flock of large golden birds. They were snuggled up four to a perch, heads under wings as they slept, and didn’t move a feather as he swept (and chiseled, where necessary) their droppings and refilled vast basins of food and water.

“If there’s no doors on the cages, aren’t you afraid the animals will escape?” she asked, curious.

He straightened from scooping the detritus into a pan for disposal, and turned slowly to face her. His black eyes studied her a long moment, making her somewhat uncomfortable, before he smiled. “I have no need of doors,” he replied at last, cocking his head to one side. “Nor do you.”

Corinne frowned in confusion as he took up his sack of animal poop and began to amble back toward the house. “Wait!” she called, jogging after him. Haldir followed at a more leisurely and dignified pace. “What about the cartouche? What can you tell us about it?”

Radagast stowed the sack beside a disreputable-looking wooden table leaning heavily against the cottage’s wall. It had several mysterious dents and scorch-marks on its surface, and she was positive at least one of the stains was blood. “Let me see it,” he said, and held out his hand. Corinne dug it out of her bra and handed it to him.

“You might not want to—“ she began as he unwrapped it “—touch it,” she finished lamely as he plucked it from the linen with his bare fingers and held it up to the sunlight. It glittered off Aker’s two manes, highlighting his four tiny fangs exposed by the open, roaring mouths. Between his heads, the flat disc of the sun seemed to shine as brightly as the original overhead.

Radagast tapped the sun-disc with a dirt-encrusted nail. “So, you think this is the point of Aker’s mischief, do you? He wants to obscure the sun?”

Corinne blinked. “What else could it be? We couldn’t think of anything else that he could do, or that he’d need such a big chunk of life-force to accomplish…”

“Can you not?” His voice was low and amused. “Think harder. Think… of things both greater, and lesser.”

She let out a whimper and clutched her hands to her head. “You’re making my brain hurt.” The wizard sighed, and went back in the house. “Hey!” she yelled, stomping after him. “If you wouldn’t speak in riddles, I’d understand whatever the hell it is you’re trying to say!”

She followed Radagast into a sitting room across from the dining chamber. In it was a semi-circle of chairs pulled round the crackling fireplace. Also in it were Legolas and Buffy, seated somewhat stiffly in two of those chairs, while a third was occupied by an elf that was nothing short of magnificent.

“Woof,” Corinne said, skidding to a stop so suddenly that Haldir bumped into her from behind. A flash of displeasure and jealousy from Haldir burst into her mind, but she shook it away. The newcomer turned his head on a long, tanned neck to survey her with eyes of piercing, brilliant green, and Corinne felt distinctly light-headed as he studied her with a lazy, knowing arrogance that took her breath away.

“This,” Legolas began in a strained voice, “is my father, Thranduil, King of Mirkwood.”

Corinne’s gaze dropped from the flawless contours of his face to the rest of him. He wore a sleeveless tunic, and arm-bands of elaborately wrought gold clasped his considerable biceps. His trousers did not in any way disguise the bulges of muscle that ran the length of his legs, and the belt that clasped his trim waist seemed only to draw attention to the area beneath it…

Dragging her gaze from him, she managed to say, “This is your father?” Her brain seemed to be stuck on ‘incredulity’; he looked like no father she’d ever seen in her life. But the begetting of a child… oh, that she could imagine without any effort whatsoever.

Beside her, Haldir read her thoughts and growled. He nodded shortly to the newcomer, who nodded back with languid unconcern. “When did you arrive?”

“Just minutes ago,” Thranduil replied easily. “One of Radagast’s accursed birds notified him of my approach, and he made sure my son and… daughter were awaiting me.” The pause he gave before speaking the word daughter was barely perceptible, unless you were another elf or a Slayer, in which case it was completely noticeable and more than a little insulting. Nevertheless, Buffy’s determinedly cheerful smile did not waver, though her grip on Legolas’ hand tightened.

His voice was like a violin, Corinne thought absently as she watched his pink, perfectly sculpted lips move; throbbing and sweet and low, and all at the same time. What would it sound like moaning a woman’s name in passion? As the thought spurred yet another naughty mind-picture, Haldir growled louder.

Radagast looked up from where he was setting a kettle of water on the hook over the fire and grinned. “There’s a cock amongst the hens,” he commented slyly. “But where are the other chickens?”

As if on cue, Tatharë, Dawn, and Arwen appeared in the doorway. The elleths were better at hiding their reaction to Thranduil, but Dawn goggled shamelessly.

“Who’s this tasty little crumpet?” she asked, staring appreciatively even as Boromir could be heard muttering unhappily in the hall.

“Legolas’ father,” Corinne explained in a whisper.

“Apple didn’t fall far from the tree,” Dawn commented, eyeing Thranduil avidly. “And whatta tree…are you single?”

“It does not matter if *he* is single,” Boromir said, tugging on her hand, “because *you* most certainly are not.” She grumbled, but allowed him to pull her out of the room again.

“I’m single,” Corinne said immediately, and smiled at Thranduil. He smiled back, a slow smile that spoke of tangled sheets and passionate whispers in the dark, and she groped for a wall to lean against. Haldir growled again.

“Your majesty,” Tatharë breathed, sinking into a low curtsey before him.

“Tatharë,” Thranduil addressed the elleth, surveying her from the humble chair as if it were a throne of mithril and gems, “ever is thy sight a joy.”

“You honour me, my lord,” she replied faintly, a very pretty flush creeping up her throat. Now it was Rúmil who was growling.

“Not at all,” the king demurred smoothly before turning his attention to Arwen, and something flickered in the emerald depths of his eyes. “Undómiel,” he said, standing. “A star truly shines on the moment of our meeting.”

“We are well met, my lord,” she said with perfect composure, but there was no disguising the faint tremor of her hand when Thranduil lifted it to his lips, golden hair swinging forward to frame his face and brush her skin. Every female in the room sighed, and it was like a storm gusting through the cottage.

Legolas made a noise of deep disgust and strode from the room, pushing roughly by Elessar as he was entering.

“I’ll just… go talk to him,” Buffy said haltingly, seeming almost unable to drag her gaze from Thranduil but managing with a mighty effort.

The kettle gave a piercing whistle. Radagast pulled it from the fire and there was silence once more as Elessar’s keen eyes took in the scene before him; Thranduil still held Arwen’s hand and even now watched the other king with a heavy-lidded gaze that was half amusement, half challenge as he sat once more.

Elessar told Arwen he needed to speak with her, privately, in a completely unconvincing show of ownership that only made her glare daggers at him as she followed him from the room, and Rúmil was also quick to request Tatharë’s presence elsewhere. When the room was emptied of all save Radagast, Thranduil, Corinne (still watching him closely) and Haldir (still frowning fiercely), the wizard emitted a laugh that was almost a cackle.

“Your penchant for causing trouble almost makes me like you, Oropherion,” he told the Silvan king. “Almost.” He poured them all cups of tea, but made no move to actually hand them out. “May I assume you are here to see your son? For if you are here to beg my intervention of behalf of your realm, my answer remains as it ever was.”

“I still doubt I could fit the entire forest there, Radagast,” Thranduil murmured, leaning forward to take a cup in his long, lean fingers before slouching back in a posture of negligent ease that made Corinne sigh before she could catch herself. “Surely you could learn a new insult after all these years?”

“Why bother?” the wizard asked swiftly. “The old one yet suits so perfectly.” He drained his cup of tea and set it with a thump down on the scarred table. “Go and talk to your son, or go make eyes at the she-elf again, I care not. But there are things I must discuss with these two that are none of your concern.”

Thranduil stood, utterly unperturbed by Radagast’s scarcely hidden hostility, and nodded to Corinne and Haldir as he left. She could feel the wordless fury in her lover’s mind, and wondered at it— surely he couldn’t be that jealous, could he?

“I am not,” he thought to her. “I have never liked Thranduil, and even less now.” Before she had time to learn more, however, Radagast was speaking.

“Still you have not figured out my riddle, although with Thranduil’s arrival, I am not surprised you would be… distracted. Ever are the ladies enchanted by him.” His tone indicated his poor opinion of those who would be fooled by such a flimsy thing as appearance. Easy enough for a shape-shifter to think, Corinne felt. “But now we must talk of more serious things.”

He poured another cup of tea and drank, even though its great heat must have scalded his mouth, and reached into his tunic for the cartouche, which he placed on the table among the teacups. “Aker does not concern himself with the sun these days; but yet he is the keeper of the gate, and would prevent those who travel from reaching the far shore.” He surveyed her from under bushy brows. “East to west, young one. Who travels from east to west in this world?”

Haldir stiffened beside her as realization dawned, horrible and sharp, within them both. “He means to cut off the Straight Path to Valinor for the elves,” he murmured, setting his cup down hard so it rattled on the table.

At the wizard’s nod, Corinne frowned. “But why? If he’s got plans to take over Middle-Earth, wouldn’t having more elves here hinder him? It would just mean more to fight him. I mean, the most powerful elves of this age are still here… Galadriel, Celeborn, Elrond, Glorfindel…”

“Indeed it would.” Radagast fell silent and slouched back in his chair, threading his fingers together over his belly and staring out the window. “If,” he continued, “that were his plan. But I fear his desires are somewhat more… ambitious than merely ruling Arda.”

“You cannot mean…” Haldir began, but could not seem to finish his sentence. His grasp on Corinne’s hand tightened until she was in pain, but still she said nothing.

“Yes,” Radagast confirmed. “Not Arda, but Aman itself. Yavanna has made her fear of this plain to me. By keeping on Arda these elves you have mentioned, his conquest of Aman would be much simpler.”

“How can this be possible?” Haldir’s voice was almost shaking. “How can he dare to attack the Valar themselves?”

“He dares because of you,” Radagast said plainly, and Haldir jerked back as if slapped. “Because of the force he drains from you, and you.” He nodded to Corinne, who shrank back in her chair, aghast at her role in this whole debacle. “Tell me, have you joined?”

“Not entirely,” Corinne answered for them, as Haldir was staring at the wall, his jaw clenched, a muscle leaping in his lean cheek as he struggled to contain himself. “Galadriel told us not to.”

Radagast nodded again. “Wise,” he said. “But then, she always was.” He paused. “Except for that bit about following Fëanor, but I digress…yes, I am glad, it will make it easier for me to sever your bond.”

“You can do that?” She tried to ignore the sinking feeling in her chest, mirrored in Haldir, she knew, and vying only with his despair for Aker’s designs on Valinor for painfulness. “How? And when?”

“’Twill be an easy matter,” the Maia replied, standing and gathering up the cups. “Only a matter of draining the cartouche, of ridding it of all the blood used to purchase its powers over the years. Releasing the blood will remove the centuries of power Aker has drained. As for when…” he plunked the cups into a basin and pumped some water over them, then took up a rag and began to wash them with vigour. “I could do it now, this moment, but I suspect neither of you are prepared for such an event.”

He threw them a glance over his shoulder, mustache twitching in what could, quite loosely, be termed sympathy. “You should go now,” he suggested, not unkindly. “Go, and enjoy what time you have left. Tell me when you are ready. I will be here.” He smiled a little. “I am always here.”

*doll-nîn = my dusky one
Oropherion = son of Oropher, Thranduil’s father
Arda = another name for Middle-Earth
Aman = another name for Valinor
Yavanna = Valar/goddess of plants and animals; Radagast is her particular servant.

Part 17

Legolas stood in the garden, right in the middle of the mosaic of the trees, eyes closed as he extended his senses. The sounds of his home—wind murmuring through branches, animals scurrying along, and the trees themselves whispering faintly, so faintly—threatened to overwhelm him. He felt guilt, for being away so long; delight, at having returned; familiarity, so comforting, like a warm embrace.

Mostly, though, he wanted to leave again. To ride out on a fast horse, eyes resolutely ahead, and return to Sérevinya where he had made a new home with his beloved Dagnir. In his mind’s eye Legolas could easily picture the large chair in which she would insist on curling up beside him, though they barely fit in it together.

He saw the firelight crackling on the hearth, and the faded rug where Mercas would play when Dawn and Boromir brought him for a visit. Of an evening, Legolas would often bring out a whittling knife and carve a toy for the child, and delight in the gummy smile he would receive as pudgy fingers explored the bear, or Oliphant, or horse his uncle had just gifted him with.

Comfortable days he had spent there, where he lived freely, and not under the capricious rule and greedy whim of Thranduil. He loved his sire; he had been a stern but caring father, but as often happens when the child becomes an adult and sees a parent with eyes unclouded by adoration and awe, Legolas did not like Thranduil very much.

For Mirkwood’s king was devious; he was sly and complicated and never would one know where truly he stood on any issue. Legolas found it frustrating, and as the years passed, he was unable to long endure his father’s machinations. Thranduil seemed to delight in keeping others off-balance, even his own offspring, and his youngest son was no longer willing to play such games.

When the need to admit their loss of Gollum from Mirkwood’s dungeons had presented itself, Legolas had leapt at the chance to serve as messenger, knowing it would afford him at least a month’s respite from Thranduil’s court. Little had he known that it would be not a month, but years before he would again clap eyes on his father, and as his sensitive ears picked up on the sounds of feet—one pair human, the other elven and almost as familiar as his own—he sighed, knowing his solitude at an end.

His wife slipped her arms around his waist and he gratefully gathered her into his embrace; she was his fortitude, more than she knew. “I’ll be nice if it kills me,” she promised him, and he smiled almost against his will.

“It might,” he replied, gazing down into her face. “We are fortunate you can choose whether you remain dead.”

“If he’s too irritating, I might not decide to come back,” Buffy said ominously. “Did you see the way he was scoping out Arwen? I mean, yeah, she’s the most beautiful creature on the planet but still, lecherous much?”

Legolas sighed. “It had nothing to do with lechery, herves-nîn,” he told her, “and everything to do with challenging the authority of another king, another male. Can you think of a better way to rile a newly-crowned monarch, and newly-wed Man, than by seducing his wife?”

“Indeed,” commented a silk-velvet voice, and Thranduil himself stepped onto the mosaic floor. “Ever have you had a talent for analyzing my conduct, ionath-nîn. And ever has it pained me that you take no joy in it, for it is a pleasure that few may experience.” He smirked, and Legolas could feel the tiny tremor that shook Buffy at the sight. “It is reserved for those few of us with royal blood.”

Legolas gave a snort that, if it had been words, would have said “royal blood, my elven fanny”. “What do you wish to say to us, Father?” he asked, forcing a note of politeness that he certainly did not feel into his tone. “For I cannot imagine you are well pleased with my choice of mate.”

Thranduil’s gaze, as green as the leaves he’d named his son for, flicked over Buffy. “On the contrary,” he said, surprising them both, “if you had to marry a daughter of Man, Dagnir seems to be a fine choice.” He smiled at her, a real smile, and this time her breath caught hard in her chest. “I have heard much of you, of your exploits in Lindon as well as your role during the war.”

Buffy smiled. So trusting, she was… Legolas knew his wife was being lulled by his father’s similarity to himself, knew she was thinking something like, “he wasn’t so bad, after all… just a little daunting, because of the gorgeousness and being king and all”...

“I have also,” Thranduil continued, “heard you sacrificed your boon to return life to him. For that, you have my gratitude and devotion, eternally.”

Legolas frowned; he knew perfectly well it was one of Elrond’s sons who had told his father of that, and vowed to beat them severely when next he saw them—even the other one, for he knew that when one twin was guilty, the other usually was, as well. Accursed peredhil.

Buffy, however, was amazed at the depth of emotion evident in Thranduil’s words; this was an elf who truly, genuinely loved his son, no matter how the son seemed firm about distancing himself. As she loved his son too, she couldn’t really blame him, and her determination to get her father-in-law to like her was redoubled.

“My pleasure,” she replied, staring shyly down at her feet before daring to peep up at him through her lashes. “Are you really angry about Legolas not marrying an elleth?”

“Yes,” he replied calmly. “I’m quite furious, and took an axe to every stick of furniture in my bedroom when I was informed he had wed you. But my fury changes nothing, so best not to dwell upon it, would you not agree?”

“Um, yeah,” Buffy said, trying to get a grip on how to deal with him. One minute he was sweet, the next a total creep. “Can you please pick a personality and stick with it? Because I’m getting really confused.”

“Then my work here is finished,” Thranduil purred, and turned to go back to the cottage. At the edge of the clearing, however, he stopped and glanced over his shoulder. “Greenleaf, if you decide you will speak to me again today, please come find me in my chambers. I will await you there.” There was the merest whisper of tree branches shifting as he slipped between them, immediately disappearing into their midst.

“No wonder you didn’t want to come back,” Buffy said with some awe, turning to face her husband. “I don’t care how pretty he is. Will we have to spend much time with him? Because if so, I'm gonna go insane! A danger to myself and others within three days, I swear.”

Legolas only curled his arm around his wife and pressed her face to his chest, sighing against her hair. “I hope not, Dagnir. I hope not.” More footsteps sounded in the distance: one elven, one human, and not the familiar tread of Boromir, Dawn, or Elessar. “Corinne and Haldir come.”

Haldir preceded Corinne into the clearing, his face grim as he tugged her after him and tried to keep her from bumping into things as she wasn’t looking at all where she was walking, but had craned her head around on her neck to scrutinize the path whence they’d come.

“Your father,” she told Legolas once she was facing forward again, “is the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. But he’s a cold bastard, isn’t he?” At his surprised nod, she continued. “Ruins it for me.” And she tucked her arm through Haldir’s and grinned up at him. “I like my men pissy, but not cold.”

Relaxing a fraction, Haldir smirked down at her. “And how do you prefer your elves?”

She didn’t give a sarcastic answer, as the others expected, but began to cry. “I prefer my elves to be you,” Corinne sobbed. “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” she whispered over and over against his shoulder.

Buffy frowned. “What did Radagast say?”

Haldir explained; they were just as horrified as he’d expected them to be. “We must discuss this with the others at once,” Legolas exclaimed, and they trooped inside to fetch everyone. They gathered once more in the dining room—even Thranduil, who insisted in his lazy way that he be included in the briefing— and since the group did not include Haldir’s archers or Elessar’s soldiers, the room didn’t have to expand too much to hold everyone. With cups of fragrant tea steaming on the table before them, the questions began.

“How is it you know all this stuff?” Dawn blurted first.

“How is it you’ve been here over a year and still do not fathom how matters are different here from your home?” Radagast countered. Boromir bristled at his hostile tone toward his wife. “Istari are not common; we do not roam over hill and dale just waiting for Iluvatar’s children to get themselves into scrapes so we can save them.” He frowned. “This is what comes of Olórin’s conduct... always too familiar with the children, always intervening… accursed wizard!”

“What in the hell is he ranting about?” Corinne asked Haldir out of the corner of her mouth, eyes never leaving Radagast’s face even as she groped blindly for her notebook and pen to record his words.

“Olórin is the name of Gandalf in Quenya,” the elf explained to her in thought. Aloud, he said, “Radagast, be you calm, and do not start once more to rail against Gandalf; he is not our concern at the moment. I ask you, as does Dawn: how do you come to know the answers to our questions?”

The wizard’s eyes travelled from the march-warden’s face above, and beyond, to the various baskets and bowls covering the shelf running the perimeter of the room. A faint mew told Corinne he was watching the progress of one of the kittens. “Olórin’s presence in the world of Man and Elf has allowed those people to think we Istari are naught more than your nursemaids.”

“We are not here to serve you; we are gods in our own right, and serve only those whose might is greater than our own. I follow Yavanna Kementári, Queen of the Earth. What little I do not ken of my own, she tells me.” He raked his gaze over each person at the table in turn. “Is that a sufficient reply?”

Dawn gulped and nodded. Buffy piped up with a question of her own. “You seem to be pretty cranky; why should we believe what you say?”

Radagast startled them by grinning suddenly. “Come now, children. I have been given Olórin’s approval. Surely you would trust that?” He gazed around the table; not one of the group looked remotely trusting of him. He grinned wider. “Excellent. It would seem you have finally learned… and it only took an age…” He glanced at Haldir and Thranduil, the two eldest elves in the party. “Or two.”

A dozen glowers were directed at him. He merely quirked a bushy brow. “Do you have a choice, but to trust me?” They did not, and they knew it. “Now, then. The matter of the cartouche.” All eyes dropped to survey it as it lay on the table. “It was created in another world, meant to drain the energy of those with greed in their hearts. No, I pray you,” he said tiredly, turning to Corinne, who’d begun to tear up once more, “do not cry again, for I did not mean you.”

She sniffled, but maintained her composure, and he continued. “It would seem that the forces of evil from this other world wish to close off the Straight Path, by which the Eldar make their way to Valinor. In this way, they seek to weaken their adversaries, the Valar, by preventing the Eldar from sailing West and coming to the aid of their gods, families, friends.” He surveyed the faces around him. “We cannot allow this to happen.”

“What must we do?” Elessar inquired. “For while there is still breath in this mortal body, I shall not allow it to pass.” Boromir frowned at this, but said nothing. Legolas knew the Man thought of the implications for his beloved Gondor should the king, so newly crowned, fail to return from this mission.

“We must destroy the cartouche,” Haldir said, his voice quiet but firm even as a mental wail of anguish coursed from Corinne. “No more will I allow this foul being to use me against the Valar.”

Radagast nodded in recognition of the elf’s words. “But destroying the cartouche is only the first of our tasks, I fear.”

“We have to lay the smackdown on Aker himself, don’t we?” Dawn ventured. “Even if we get rid of the cartouche, he might still have enough power to carry out his plan.”

“Dearly I love this idea,” stated Gimli. “And dearly do I wish to begin. But how do you propose, O Wise Istari,” he added, a touch of sarcasm in his gravelly voice, “that we engage a god from another world in battle? Will he fall to my axe-blow? For somehow I doubt this.”

“Ooh, good point, Gimli!” Buffy said, beaming at him and patting his arm fondly. “Gimli has a very good, excellent point, Radagast,” she informed the wizard. “I don’t have a troll hammer this time. And how are we going to get our grubby little hands on Aker in the first place?” An idea seemed to come to her then, one she didn’t like. At all. “You’re not thinking to bleed Dawn to make a portal, are you?”

“Well, actually, yes,” Radagast answered, to his credit only flinching a little when the small woman began shouting. He flicked a glance at her husband, who tugged on her arm until she was seated in his lap, red-faced, as he stroked her hair and spoke soothingly into her ear.

“Buffy, it’s ok,” Dawn tried to assure her sister. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot… I’m ok with being the Key, with opening portals. It’s what I am, after all… it’s like those shutters, you know?”

Buffy ceased her disgruntled mumbling to join the others in staring at Dawn. "I think I speak for everyone here when I say, ‘huh?’ "

“You know, the shutters. Houses with fake shutters… they’re there to decorate, but they don’t actually close and protect the windows. They’re like… a mockery of genuine shutters. I’ve always disliked them.” The Arda people had no idea whatsoever of what she spoke; only Buffy and Corinne were watching her with anything remotely resembling comprehension. “If I didn’t use my Key-ness, if I just led a normal life and did nothing with my abilities, I’d be just as bad as those stupid shutters.”

Buffy shook her head. “It’s not the same thing, Dawnie…”

“What’s not the same thing,” Corinne interrupted, her gaze never wavering from Dawn, “is that you’re having a reaction about being used that comes from your own experiences and emotions. And you’re projecting them onto your sister, and not listening to what she’s saying.”

The Slayer gasped in fury, opening her mouth to retaliate, when Dawn spoke. “She’s right, Buffy.” She took a deep breath. “I was created from you, but I’m not you. I know how you hated being treated like property by the Watchers Council, and then the Valar playing games with your life, but… I was made to be used.” She fell silent, obviously choosing her next words with care. “I feel empty unless I’m being used. It’s my purpose, my fate. No matter how I love Boromir and Mercas—“ she reached for her husband’s hand, clasping it tightly— “refusing my powers instead of employing them leaves me feeling hollow.”

“You’re going to do this whether I want you to or not, aren’t you?” Buffy asked flatly. Dawn nodded. “Even if I ask you to consider how dangerous it will be? How it could leave Boromir without a wife, and Mercas without a mother?” Another nod, though given slower this time. At her response, Buffy just turned her face into Legolas’ neck and sighed as Elessar’s hand came to rest on her shoulder in silent support.

“When, then?” came her garbled question.

“In a sen’night,” Radagast announced, but Corinne surprised them all by shaking her head.

“No,” she said clearly. “I can’t take this for so long. The dread of ending it has been like a knife in my stomach this entire trip; I can’t take any more. I need it to be sooner. Like tomorrow.”

“We will need time to prepare and pack our supplies,” Elessar reminded her, frowning even as he continued his idle stroking of Buffy’s arm, obviously concerned for his friend. Corinne slumped in her seat, feeling defeated.

“Enough of that,” Haldir snapped. “Your ability to pity yourself is truly astounding, doll-nîn. I know you to be stronger than this; do not disappoint me.” Corinne stared at him in shock, unable to decide whether to be angry or hurt, and Radagast sighed in disgust as her eyes filled with tears yet again.

Thranduil had been silent during the proceedings up; now, he spoke. “You tried to force Dagnir to face the truth,” he said in his cool silken tones on the far side of the table. “A clumsy attempt, to be sure, but effective. Haldir now attempts the same with you. Will you reject his lesson, or accept it as Dagnir has accepted hers?” He paused a moment to let his words sink in, emerald gaze glittering as it flicked negligently over her. “Dawn’s fate is as a Key. Shall yours be that of hypocrite?”

Corinne’s pout, which had just started to form, fell abruptly off her face. “Well, damn,” she muttered, reluctantly admiring his artful and effortless manipulation of her. “Wouldn’t want to be a hypocrite, would I?”

“Indeed not,” he returned, a smile teasing the corners of his sensuous mouth. “There is naught worse.”

And Legolas snorted in disbelief, rolling his eyes in a manner much closer to that of his wife than of the high and haughty elf-kind of Mirkwood.

*peredhil = half-elves
herves-nîn = my wife
ionath-nîn = my son
doll-nîn = my dusky one

Part 18

The rest of the week passed, for Corinne, in a confused haze of despair and frustration, laughter and study. The impending date of the severance of her bond with Haldir preyed almost constantly on her mind, and Radagast had forbidden even the half-arsed fornication she and Haldir had employed to alleviate the symptoms of their separation, so she was constantly either sore or uncomfortably close to him once more—the buffer zone they’d managed to create with their nights of pleasure was abruptly gone.

Why was she uncomfortable to be close to him, you may well ask? It was because, with the moment of freedom close at hand, she had started to think about how things would be after it was all over. Clearly, she could not return to New York—there was nothing waiting for her there except, perhaps, an indictment. Haldir had sworn that she had a home with him always, but would he still mean it afterwards? And could she live in the same place as he, knowing him so intimately—body and soul, in every way possible-- and yet forbidden to do anything but cherish what memories she might be able to clasp to her heart?

Corinne knew Haldir well enough to be sure he would want nothing to do with her beside friendship, once they were back to normal. He would return to his former demeanor, that of stern and forbidding Guardian of the Golden Wood, who thought little of love and sex and romance. And she, she would once more become the mousy scholar, valued for her mind but not her heart. The embarrassment of seeing him, knowing how his skin tasted and the sounds he made when he came, would be unbearable for her.

With a sigh, she realized she’d made a decision. She’d either take up Elessar and Arwen on their beautifully phrased invitation to join them in Minas Tirith, or else go to Minas Ithil with Dawn and Boromir… the idea of having all of Orthanc’s massive library to peruse made her fingertips itch to feel the heavy vellum pages, made her nose twitch to smell the ancient leather covers. It pained her deeply to have to leave behind long, familiar years of studying Egypt, but at the same time she couldn’t be more pleased: dealing with Aker had rather turned her off the whole thing, and Middle-Earth was brimming with millennia of cultures still unstudied and unexplored.

She’d spent the bulk of the week, when she could persuade Haldir to bear Thranduil’s presence, interviewing Mirkwood’s king about his realm. A fascinating and complex elf, Thranduil was more than pleased to lounge in a chair in the garden, allowing the damselflies to alight on his hair and shoulders, and expound on his views of life, death, and everything in between. Corinne doubted he was telling her anything resembling the truth but duly wrote notes on all he said.

When Haldir could take no more, she sought out Gimli and plied him with questions on the Dwarven peoples, to his immense delight. Many times Buffy and Legolas would join them, and then Orophin would take a seat (Rúmil and Tatharë having left for the palace of Mirkwood already, to visit her family), and suddenly Elessar and Arwen and Boromir and Dawn were there as well, all vying to tell the tallest tale. Stories of the Fellowship, many featuring four greatly-missed Hobbits, were a running favourite. Someone would procure brimming cups of ale for them all, and before she knew it, it was a party.

Like all kickin’ parties, of course, there had to be a sour person who called the cops and ruined it all. In their case, it was “one of those thrice-damned kittens!” as Gimli called them—it had scampered away in a huff after the Dwarf refused to allow it to snuggle in his luxuriant beard to fetch Radagast, who came as if on winged feet to break up the fun. The wizard seemed to have a congenital dislike for joy of any sort, and indeed seemed to be, as Dawn called him, “the world’s best cure for happiness”.

He was an excellent cook, though, so they tried not to get on his nerves too much.

Destroying the cartouche, he had explained, would eliminate any possibility of her returning to her world. Corinne had accepted that without too much fuss. He had also warned that breaking it would cause not only a dangerous burst of energy, but quite possibly a tidal wave of blood as it released the sacrifice of millennia of people paying for its powers with their blood. “Yay,” she said, not very happily at all.

Nights, she would lay in Haldir’s arms, safely dressed in cotton pajamas, awake far into the night as she thought of the future. Sometimes they would talk in hushed murmurs as the lone candle flickered its golden light on the crude plank walls of their room; sometimes they would merely think to each other, minds touching in an infinitely intimate caress few others had ever enjoying in all of Arda’s long history.

And sometimes they were just silent in the darkness, reveling in the feel of warmth against warmth, body against body. Delighting in the sound of soft breaths, of the barely-there thud of heartbeats, of the faint rustle of crisp sheets as legs shifted, of the whisper of tree branches blown about by the wind as it moaned a dirge on the other side of their window.

She felt closer to him at those times than when she shared her body with him, closer even than when he had shared his mind with her. At those times, she could pretend that they weren’t separated by race and world and appearance. He wasn’t an elf; she wasn’t a woman; they were just Haldir and Corinne, and they loved each other. It was just that simple, at least for a little while.

Like all things, however, it couldn’t last.

It was early, when she woke, on the morning they were to break the cartouche. The first thing she was aware of was the divine scent of Haldir’s hair as a lock of it lay, smooth and shining, across her nose. The second thing she realized was that he lay half-across her, his face buried against her neck and his arm tightly wrapped around her. The third, and infinitely most disturbing factor was that sometime during the night his leggings had vanished, and her own nightshirt was rucked up around her waist, thus providing no barrier at all to her traitorous body, which immediately began to rebel against her mind in wanting to couple with him.

Trying to breath deeply and evenly, so she didn’t disturb his Reverie, Corinne fought to ignore the pooling of heat at her core, tried to disregard the slow, sweet tingle of desire flowing through her limbs. Most of all, she aspired to keep her legs from parting, but it was a sadly futile battle—they spread entirely of their own accord and raised to wrap around his narrow waist.

Immediately, two things happened. One: Haldir hardened instantly against her, and why wouldn’t he? She was warm, and wet, and her woman’s hair was soft against his sensitive flesh. Two: he snapped awake and stared down at her, an inscrutable expression on his face. Then slowly, so slowly, his hand came between their bodies to find her, leaning on one elbow so he could watch his ministrations to her.

Corinne looked too, and felt lust scald up her torso at the sight of his hand cupping her pubic mound, long fingers slipping down to tease and rub. Expert from so many hours of making love to her, Haldir’s archery-calloused fingertips found her easily, grazing lightly here, harder there, until her own hands clasped his wrist and made his fingers slip inside her, bringing her to the verge with almost embarrassing speed, hips rising insistently to meet them.

A wave of love overcame her. “More,” she breathed, eyes closed in bliss. "Oh, please... I need more... I need you..."

Haldir removed his hand, but instead of replacing it with his mouth as he’d always done before, she felt instead the weight of his body press onto her. A moment’s trepidation danced through her mind, but was swiftly replaced by a single thought: “Surrender… surrender to him…” It didn’t sound like Haldir, nor even her own thoughts, but it certainly expressed everything she longed to do. It felt like coming home, this acceptance of his body on hers, and once more her thighs gripped around his hips tightly.

She felt the head of his shaft nudge up against her entrance, and opened her mind to him as she had opened her body. Love pulsed within him, strong and sweet, but there was a part of him that flared brightly, white-hot and primal and untamed. It was this part, she was sure, that made him thrust forward and impale her in a single smooth motion. She gave a long, low moan and heard it echoed in Haldir’s voice. Watching his face closely, she saw his eyes widen as he slid in to the hilt, breath catching at the perfection of it.

He shifted, sinking even deeper within her, to pin her hands over her head. Corinne felt vulnerable this way, exposed and at his mercy, but met his pewter gaze, and knew her trust in him blazed from her own eyes. “I love you,” she said, quite clearly.

“And I you,” he replied, withdrawing only to drive into her once more, sending shock-waves of pleasure thrilling through her. “With my last breath, I will love you.”

Tears came to her eyes at this declaration of his devotion, of his commitment to her. They would be together, now… forever together. An image wavered into her mind’s eye, an image of a small, chubby infant with dark hair and pewter eyes. Oh, to have Haldir’s child… a living symbol of their love for each other, living proof that obstacles like race and world could be overcome.

But no, that wasn’t right… it was hard to think, with him undulating against her and the desire crashing over her like salty ocean waves, but once she could recall their origins, of how they’d met, her memories of the cartouche and all it represented came back to her like bitter gorge. “Surrender to him…” came the thought again, and this time she knew it wasn’t his mind-voice speaking to her.

“No,” she gasped. “Haldir, you must stop.” In reply, he pushed her nightshirt up to expose her breasts and began to suckle at her rosy nipples. Hands free, she threaded her hands in his silken hair, clasping him tightly to her one last moment before pushing him away. “Haldir!” she cried into his pointed ear, then repeated it mentally, trying to get his attention, to make him cease even as her pelvis met his in a quickening cadence. “You must stop, please Haldir. You must stop.”

His eyes were wild as they met hers, and his mind was feral and uncontrolled, utterly unlike the Haldir she knew. “Surrender to me,” he gritted out between clenched teeth.

This isn’t him, Corinne realized, panicked, and felt the last of her desire fade away as she tried desperately to figure a way to stop him. Scrabbling her hand to the side, she felt cold metal against the back of her fingers and wrapped them around the stout iron candlestick on the low table by the bed.

“Forgive me,” she whispered, weeping freely, and had time only to register Haldir’s look of puzzlement before she brought it down on his head. He fell unconscious at once, slumping heavily over her, and she had to push hard to wriggle free from under him. Once on her feet, she smoothed her nightshirt down over her hips with shaking hands before making her way around the bed to the door.

She hadn’t taken three steps before a hand clamped around her wrist, wheeling her around, and Corinne gasped to see the rage twisting Haldir’s beloved face as he levered himself off the bed, blood staining his silver-gilt hair an obscene crimson.

“You shall not thwart me,” he said, and his voice was deeper, echoing somehow in the tiny room. “Surrender to me!”

“This isn’t you!” Corinne protested hoarsely, struggling against his chest as he pulled her closer. Realizing he—whoever was possessing Haldir’s body—meant to rape her, she began to fight in earnest. “Buffy!” she managed to scream before his hand came down over her mouth, and even then she kicked out with her legs, sending the table flying with a crash, and jolting the bed frame noisily across the floor.

The door banged open then, revealing Buffy with Elessar right behind her. Her face grim, Buffy strode into the room and grabbed Haldir by the scruff of the neck, flinging him away from Corinne as Elessar scooped the woman up, cradling her close as she sobbed against his shoulder. Dawn lurched into the room, Boromir and Orophin hot on her heels.

“It’s not him,” Corinne repeated brokenly. “It wasn’t him.”

Haldir grinned up at them from where he was sprawled across the floor, wiping a trickle of blood from his split lip. “On the contrary,” he purred. “It’s always been me.”

Buffy sighed, feeling much older than her thirty-nine years. “Sorry about this, Hal,” she told him, and clocked him right in the face. Predictably, he fell unconscious, and she motioned to Orophin and Boromir to put him back on the bed. “We have to end this, right now, before he wakes up,” she said, her gaze soft on Corinne’s tear-streaked face. “Where’s Radagast?”

“I am here,” said the wizard, entering the room. His gaze, when it fell on Corinne’s huddled figure in Elessar’s arms, was almost compassionate. “Are you well enough to do this?” he asked her gently.

She pulled free and dug the heels of her hands into her eyes, scrubbing hard. “Yes,” she said, her voice muffled. “I have to be.” She gathered up some clothing—jeans, sneakers, cotton henley, underwear—and left the room. Dawn immediately swooped on her, guiding her with an arm around shaking shoulders toward her and Boromir’s room to change, the latter following close behind, his face grave.

Ten minutes later, Haldir was still unconscious (but, thanks to his brother, now clothed), sprawled across the two trees of the mosaic floor in the garden. Around him in a circle stood the others, all dressed as if going into battle: Buffy had both a sword and a hatchet thrust into her belt, while Legolas’ usual favourites, his long white knives and bow, were strapped to his back. Andúril’s hilt gleamed at Elessar’s side, and Gimli fingered the haft of his axe expectantly. Boromir rested his hands on the edge of his big round shield, gazing down at the mosaic’s tiles as if they could answer a particularly difficult question for him, and at his side Dawn gripped her much-loved pike with nervous hands.

Orophin stepped forward then, and rearranged his brother’s limbs into a more comfortable position, so his legs were straight and his hands neatly folded on his chest.

“His eyes are closed,” Corinne murmured. She was past being upset, and now her predominant emotion was switching back and forth with startling speed between confused, numb, and angry. “He looks dead.”

Radagast, who’d been waving his staff in complicated patterns to begin the ritual, shot her a dirty look, and she shut up. At his gesture, she stepped forward and shimmery golden threads began to flow from his staff to spiral around her, weaving into and around each other until she was surrounded by a sparkling web of light that would protect the others from the release of power contained in the golden artifact. With one last, anguished glance of longing toward Haldir’s still form at her feet, Corinne held the cartouche out in a trembling hand.

“Netjer, kai-imakhu,” she said, willing some force into her shaky voice. “Wep em wawet merut ibi.” It began to glow as she spoke the incantation. “Hem-weshem-ib.” The cartouche burnished a deeper red with each word she spoke, pulsing like the beat of a heart. “Nehktet, nehktet…” Corinne closed her eyes against finalizing what would sever her connection with Haldir, but forged on. “Nehktet,” she finished.

In her palm, the cartouche was blazing with vermilion light, so vivid she could barely look at it, and had to shield her eyes with her other hand. “I want, more than anything, for this cartouche to be broken.” A breeze began to blow within the cocoon of energy wrapped around her, rapidly picking up speed as she spoke, whipping her hair around her face, but she was too afraid to stop in the middle. “I wish for its power to be ended, for its hold over Haldir, and me, and anyone else, to be over.”

The wind rushed around her faster and faster, deafening her, and the light grew so dazzling she was blind from the glare. She felt exhausted, like every last ounce of strength had been sucked from her. “I wish for this cartouche to break!” she mumbled one last time as a wave of fatigue overcame her and her eyes drifted closed.

Outside Corinne’s enclosure, Buffy and the others watched in horrified fascination as her body suspended limply in midair, head hanging back on her neck like a flower on a broken stem. There was a muffled explosion from within, and the cartouche cracked into two pieces in her hand. Gouts of thick crimson fluid began to spout from its raw ends, swiftly pooling at the bottom of the egg-shaped container around her.

Haldir came awake at that moment, and Buffy rushed forward to help him up. “What is happening?” he asked dazedly, leaning heavily against her. “What is that light?”

“It’s Corinne,” she replied, watching his face carefully, expecting some sort of bizarre reaction.

He did not disappoint. “I see no cerin,” he replied muzzily, rubbing his forehead. Then he looked past her and sprang to his feet, eyes wide as memories crashed back upon him. “Corinne!” he shouted, hands flat against the cocoon as he strove to communicate with her, but she was deeply unconscious. “She will perish!” he said to the others who stood watching. “She will drown! The blood, there is too much of it!”

Already, the blood spilling from the cartouche was rising over her knees, showing no end in sight, nor was Corinne displaying any indication of awakening. He began to claw at the cocoon, but its gossamer threads held fast and only undulated around his hands. Orophin came to him, handing him one of his own long daggers, and together the brothers began to hack their way to her.

“Um, they’ve got a point, “ Dawn ventured to Radagast. “The blood’s getting deep in there… isn’t it time to let her out?”

The wizard sliced her a sideways glance. “I have been trying for the past few minutes,” he admitted crossly. “Whatever power fuels the cartouche, it is interfering with my own. I cannot break down the shield I created around her.”

Buffy blinked in surprise only for a moment, and then her weapons were out as she joined Haldir and Orophin in trying to open the cocoon. After a moment, Elessar and Boromir added their swords to the effort, Andúril the only blade having any success at all against the tough golden fibres, and even then only a little. And meanwhile, the blood continued to rise.

It lapped gently at the base of her throat, then higher, as their blows grew more frantic. When Corinne’s mouth and nose were finally beneath the level of the sticky fluid, Haldir let out a wild cry of anguish and pounded with his bare fists, to no avail. As he watched with desperate eyes, the top of her head became submerged, a few bubbles blooping obscenely above.

He fell to his knees, defeated, and dropped his head in his hands. “I have failed her,” he whispered. “As if my trespass this morning were not foul enough. I have failed again.”

Buffy knelt beside him, pulling his hands away from his face. “It wasn’t your fault,” she told him sternly. “Not this morning, and not now. You—“

An excited noise from Boromir interrupted her, and both her and Haldir’s heads snapped up to see that the blood was receding once more. Leaping to their feet, they watched eagerly as the level fell, their joy swiftly turning to confusion when Corinne did not reappear.

“Maybe she’s sitting on the ground?” Dawn suggested uncertainly as the blood continued to vanish and yet no human figure was revealed. But still the blood continued to fall, and still there was no Corinne. Finally the only blood left was whatever residue clung to the golden threads of the cocoon, and the fragmented halves of the cartouche lay forlornly on the ground within them.

Wherever the blood had gone, it had taken Corinne along. With a fearsome cry, Haldir snatched Dawn’s pike (ignoring her indignant yell of protest) and calmly, coolly, launched into an all-out attack on the thing.

“Er—“ Radagast said hesitantly, “I think I can dismantle it now,” but Buffy held up her hand as she watched her friend viciously jab the deadly point over and over into the fibrous web that glimmered golden even as its threads began to shred under his assault. His face was blank, an expressionless mask of lethal intent that had struck great terror into the heart of many an orcish foe over the centuries, and the others were very glad indeed that they were not his opponent at this moment.

“Let him do it,” she said. She sighed, lacing her fingers with those of Legolas as he came to stand beside her, and met his gaze with her own anxious one. “This is not of the good.”

*Holy One, exalted reverend one,
Open the way to my deepest desire.
I subject myself to the testing of the heart.
Bring me success, bring me victory.

cerin = mound, hill, heap


Part 19

Corinne groaned. She was lying in an untidy heap, her shoulder twisted painfully under her, face pressed to the ground. “Ow.” She pushed up to a sitting position, then wished she hadn’t as pain flared inside her skull. “Ow,” she repeated, lifting a hand to cup her head, hoping it would make the ache go away. It didn’t.

Blinking, she looked around. From the way her voice had echoed, she was somewhere big… and dark. Very, very dark. She shivered and rubbed her arms. Cold, too. She ran her fingertips over the floor. It was smooth and cool; some sort of stone. Her mind raced as she tried desperately to remember what had happened. The last she remembered was falling asleep in that light-cocoon thingy Radagast had created…

“Buffy?” she called softly. “Dawn? Boromir? Legolas?” There was no answer from any of them, and after her voice finished echoing, silence reigned once more. “Haldir?” she ventured in a whisper, fighting to keep from crying when she reached out with her mind and, for the first time in a month, found only herself.

Pure terror flooded her being at the sensation of utter solitude and aloneness, threatening to overwhelm her, and she very nearly caved in to the impulse to curl back up on the floor and sob. No, she thought fiercely, no more crying, dammit. Standing, she began to take baby-steps forward, hands before her to keep from bumping into anything.

She was just beginning to think she was in some sort of empty cavern when, to her great surprise, her left hand encountered something soft and round. Giving it an experimental squeeze, she gasped in shock and leapt back about ten feet when a husky chuckle sounded in the darkness, making the thing in her hand vibrate slightly.

“Shall we not introduce ourselves first?” asked a warm alto voice, and a flame flickered to life in front of Corinne, illuminating a woman standing calmly before her. Her body, tall and slender, was displayed rather than covered in a sarong of supple white fabric, and a leopard skin draped over her shoulder to fasten, paw in mouth, at her hip. Skin the colour of honey was revealed in slim arms and long calves, and hair like jet fell in a glossy sheet to her waist. Chunky golden jewellery adorned every limb and wound sinuously around her throat, clinking richly with each movement.

One hand was held out before her, and in it a tongue of flame danced an inch above her palm. Her forehead seemed to be sparkling somehow, and Corinne squinted in the dim light, gasping when she realized that there were, imbedded in the centre of the woman’s brow, was a seven-petalled lotus that appeared to be made of some glittering stone.

“You are Corinne,” the woman said, smiling. “I am Seshat.“

“Goddess of learning, of writing and reading and…” Corinne muttered to herself, her words trailed off as her knees wobbled and she sat down, hard, on the ground. “Holy crap.”

“In my library, there is none,” Seshat replied, eyes twinkling like obsidian. “Not holy, nor profane.” She closed her fist over the flame but instead of the space around them darkening further, light flooded the space and Corinne was blinking in the suddenly-bright chamber, breath wooshing out in a rush to see that they were surrounded by row after row after row of bookshelves, at least twenty feet tall and extending as far as the eye could see in every direction from the central point at which she and the goddess stood, like spokes of a wheel.

The bookcases did not, however, only contain books. There were the standard codices, of course, but also baskets brimming with scrolls of both papyrus and vellum vying for place with various instruments like sextants and compasses and globes and models of the solar system and…

Seshat’s enchanting laughter rang out again and drew Corinne’s attention from where she’d been gazing avidly around her. Blushing faintly, she turned to attend the goddess. Seshat glided over to a tall loutrophoros that held a fat bouquet of date fronds, and plucked one from the bunch. “You are welcome here,” she said, her voice resonating like a musical note, and Corinne found herself accepting the branch with reverence.

“Thank you,” she managed, staring down at it. It symbolized, in hieroglyphics, the concept of years, the passage of a great amount of time. What in the hell is that supposed to mean? she wondered, looking back up at Seshat.

“If you wish to know something, you have only to ask. I will either tell you, or not, but you gain nothing with your silence,” Seshat admonished gently. “It is not the way of a scholar to bite her tongue.”

“What happened?“ Corinne blurted. “Where are the others? Is Haldir alright? Did the cartouche break? Is our bond severed now? Why am I here?”

“One question at a time, if you please,” Seshat laughed, and extended a hand in greeting. Her grip was surprisingly strong, and her skin was warm and soft. Which reminded her…

“Sorry about groping you before,” Corinne said, abashed gaze turned downward.

“I did not mind,” Seshat replied lightly. “It has been many a long year since I have been touched by a mortal being.”

Well, that was slightly weird. Corinne decided to ignore it and focus on the questions she needed answered. “Did the cartouche break?”

“Yes.” Seshat’s dark eyes were calm and, looking into them, Corinne could see great peace and clarity.

“Does that mean we’re no longer bonded?”

“The cartouche is broken,” Seshat repeated with great serenity

Apparently, there was a limit to the information the goddess was willing to part with. Corinne sighed, and tried another tack. “Is Haldir safe?”

“Safe, yes.”

“I sense a ‘but’ coming up…” Corinne prompted, and the goddess smiled.

“He is safe,” she said again.

“Where am I?” One more she couldn’t resist looking around, admiring the carved limestone pillars, the inlaid marble floor, and the massive amount of knowledge available for the taking… dragging her attention from its siren-call, she forced herself to listen to Seshat’s response.

“You are in my library, on Iw-n-sisi,” the goddess explained, bouncing a little on the balls of her feet and making Corinne notice her sandals. They had lotuses on the strap and reminded her strongly of Buffy and her stupid daisy-shoes, and she was surprised at how much she missed the other woman in that moment.

Then she realized what Seshat had just told her. “Iw-n-sisi?” she demanded, incredulous. “I’m on the Isle of Fire?” The Isle of Fire was the place that ancient Egyptians believed their souls explored and endured en route to being reborn. “But… but…that’s impossible.”

“Many things are so,” Seshat agreed. “And yet, you are here.” She gave an elegant shrug of narrow sienna shoulders, looking supremely unconcerned with such matters of reality and logic. “Have you forgotten the nature of Aker so quickly?”

“Bender of Reality,” Corinne muttered, and Seshat nodded.

“Quite so.”

Corinne, still on the floor, leaned back on stiff arms and crossed her ankles casually, belying her great distress. “So, why am I here? I’m guessing this isn’t just a meet-and-greet you happen to give all the history geeks like me.”

“As one who studies, who reveres books and learning, you are one of my own,” Seshat said slowly. “I am given the opportunity to offer you a choice.”

“A choice,” Corinne repeated flatly. “Between which rock and which hard place?”

The goddess smiled brightly. “Clever,” she commented. “You are clever, and would be a fine addition to my court. Will you join me?”

“What does it mean if I do?” Corinne wanted to know, trying desperately to play it cool while her insides writhed in anxiety and excitement. “What would that make me?”

“One of my priestesses, and your success would be without measure.”

“What does that mean? Exactly?”

“It means,” Seshat explained, “that you will return to your world as if you never heard of the Weshem-ib. Your life will progress normally, and you will experience unlimited joy and progress.”

Corinne’s heart leapt to her throat at the idea of having everything back to normal, and then some, before her New York-tuned twin senses of suspicion and skepticism kicked in. “And is this in exchange for my soul, or something?”

Seshat threw back her head, making her hair cascade past her hips, and laughed. “Indeed not,” she replied. “What use would I have for a soulless being? No, it simply means that after your death, you return to me here, in my library, and spend eternity as my servant.”

“Servant?” Corinne imitated Haldir in quirking a brow. “I don’t do windows.”

The goddess sobered at that. “Have you not noticed, child? There are no windows here.” She gestured around them; the aisles and aisles of books seemed to go on in a world-without-end-amen kind of way that made Corinne suddenly nervous.

“Ah,” she managed to say. “What would that mean for the people of Arda?”

Seshat’s sloe eyes blinked at her, lashes like dark fans fluttering. “Life would progress for them as if they had no knowledge of the cartouche or its origins..”

“Aker would proceed with his plans, and no one on Arda would be the wiser,” Corinne filled in, and Seshat nodded. “So what you’re telling me,” she continued, give the palm frond an airy wave for emphasis, “is if I take you up on this offer that fulfills my every dream, I’m basically screwing all of Middle-Earth without the benefit of an adequate lubricant?”

Seshat’s lovely mouth quirked in amusement. “Yes.”

Corinne sighed. “And if I decline?”

“If you decline, I must evict you from this place to make your way on Iw-n-sisi, alone. You may try to find Ta-tenen,” she tilted her head to the side, her gaze kind, “but I fear you would not last long, child. The road is long and inhospitable, fraught with dangers the likes of which you have never experienced nor surmounted.”

Corinne considered it a long moment, then stood and absently brushed off her backside. “I’m kind of getting used to danger-fraught roads,” she said thoughtfully, meeting Seshat’s eyes. “And, dangerous and inhospitable? Babe, I’m from New York. Dangerous and inhospitable is all in a day’s work for me. I’m gonna have to give it a pass. But thanks for thinking of me.”

She tried to hand the palm frond back to Seshat, but the goddess stepped back. “If I cannot have you for servant and companion, please accept that as my gift to you.”

Corinne wasn’t sure what she’d meant by that, but nodded in gratitude and folded it the best she could before stuffing it in the back pocket of her jeans. “Is this where you toss me out on my rear, then?”

Seshat’s smile was sad. “Yes.”

And then there was deep, velvety darkness once again, and Corinne knew no more.

***

It was a grim-faced bunch who met a mere hour after Corinne’s disappearance, on the spot where they’d seen her breathe her last as the blood covered her head. Haldir’s mood could best be described as ‘savage’; his reply to Radagast’s inquiry of whether the bond was still active only marginally more brutal than when he saw Dawn stuffing a few of Corinne’s notebooks and pens into her pack.

“She’ll want to write everything down when we find her,” Dawn explained tearfully, backing up in shock at the furious countenance of one very brassed-off elf.

“She is dead,” Haldir hissed, eyes blazing with anger and pain. “Dead, and therefore not likely to be writing anything, ever again.” He sounded suspiciously close to sobbing, and clamped his mouth shut until his lips were only a thin, harsh line.

“Settle down, Hal,” Buffy admonished, pushing him back with a hand to the sternum. “We don’t know if she’s dead. And don’t be mean to my sister. Try to remember that it’s Aker who’s the bad guy, ok?”

Haldir flung one last glare her way and stomped off to seethe in the corner beside Orophin, whose expression seemed to have settled permanently into ‘bewildered apprehension’. Elessar and Boromir were murmuring in low whispers as they sharpened their swords, Arwen and Radagast had their heads together in a way that was somewhat worrying to Buffy’s way of thinking, and Gimli and Thranduil were glaring at each other from across the clearing as Legolas studiously ignored them both, busying himself with checking the state of his arrows.

“It is time,” the wizard announced, and stepped to the center of the mosaic. “Dawn, if you please?”

She sighed. “Where’s the knife?”

“Knife?” Radagast frowned in confusion. “Why do we need a knife?” He held up a long, sharp pin and gestured for her to come to him.

“Gandalf needed, like, a cup or so of Eau de Dawn,” Buffy explained, watching closely as Radagast took Dawn’s hand and quickly gave her thumb a light jab. A single bead of blood welled up and he grinned crookedly at them.

“Gandalf has always been less than delicate in his spellwork,” Radagast said. “He might require a cupful; I need but a drop.” And he turned her hand so the blood spilled into the air; a pinpoint of green light appeared and, with an almost casual wave of his hand over it, began to expand.

“You are sure this is the door to Aker’s realm?” Elessar queried, mistrust clear in his voice as the green light flattened into a shimmering disk that slowly grew to the size of a Man.

“Certainly,” Radagast replied. “And even if it is not, we shall have a grand adventure, shall we not?” He grasped his pack by the trailing end of the rope binding it. “After you, your majesty.”

Elessar narrowed his eyes, trying to discern whether the Istari was mocking him, but shouldered his own pack and stepped through, followed by Boromir and Arwen and Dawn. Raised voices alerted Buffy to the fact that Haldir and Thranduil were having an argument.

“I will not allow my son to visit an alternate dimension without being there to protect him,” Thranduil was saying, his volume never rising but his level of menace ratcheting upward alarmingly.

“You son is more than adequate to the task of keeping himself alive without your esteemed presence,” Haldir gritted back, taking a step closer to the king of Mirkwood.

“Just as he was adequate to the task of finding himself an appropriate spouse?” came the silken answer. At this insult to his friend, Haldir’s eyes widened and his hand actually went to the hilt of his long knife, but Legolas stepped up to them.

“Enough posturing,” he said tautly. “When this is done, I will sit back with a cup of wine and sip with joy as you beat each other bloody, but for now, we have a foe to locate and defeat.” He turned to his father. “Come, if you will, but do not raise the anger of we who are your journey-mates, else you find yourself abandoned along the way.”

“Aye,” Gimli affirmed. “We do not suffer nuisances, and ye be the king of such, my fine lord.”

Thranduil opened his mouth, no doubt to say something horrifically rude about Glóin or some other relative of Gimli’s, but Buffy clapped one hand over his mouth, grabbed the back of his leggings with the other, and tossed him unceremoniously through the portal. His pack followed a moment later, tossed with great enthusiasm and rather more force than strictly necessary by the dwarf.

“I take no responsibility for killing him if he doesn’t shape up, honey,” she told Legolas warningly, and stepped into the swirling green mists. He passed his hand over his eyes in the universal gesture of “I’m getting a migraine” and shook his head before disappearing into the portal.

That left only Gimli, Radagast, and Haldir. Gimli heaved a gusty sigh, inexplicably pinched his nose shut, and dove in head-first, beard waving in the breeze, and Haldir shot the wizard one last glower before following the dwarf, albeit at a vastly more dignified pace and manner.

Radagast smirked at Orophin, who would stay behind deal with anyone who might wonder where two kings, two princes, a queen, a princess, the Slayer, the Guardian, a dwarf, and a demigod had managed to vanish to. Then he thrust his hand into the centre of the portal, waved his staff, and in a flash of emerald light both wizard and portal disappeared.

Orophin stared a long moment at where it had been a moment before, then turned back to the house. “How I long for a nice, simple war,” he muttered with nostalgia. “Some orcs, some Uruks, perhaps a Haradhrim or two just to keep things interesting. Straight-forward, uncomplicated.” He entered the house and strode to the dining room, where sat the archers and soldiers left behind. “I expect you lot will be wanting some dinner, won’t you?”

The elves nodded; the Men replied noisily in the affirmative. Orophin sighed. “Then I suggest you go out and kill something. One of you had better know how to cook, else we shall sup on raw venison this evening.” He settled into one of the chairs vacated when they began to file from the room, feeling distinctly grumpy and wishing Rúmil would return soon, so he would have someone to complain to.

*loutrophoros = tall elegant vase
Iw-n-sisi = Isle of Fire
Ta-tenen = Island from the Dawn of Time

Part 20

Spike blinked. “Well, this is different,” he thought. He’d never imagined that existence, after being staked, would be quite so… hot.

When that Polgara had gotten in a lucky stab with one of the bone skewers characteristic of his ‘people’ (and no, the irony of succumbing to one of the same demons that had killed Angel wasn’t at all lost on him), in the split-second between wood-entering-heart and body-going-poof all he’d had time for was the briefest thought of Buffy and Dawn before consciousness shut off with the sudden snap of a light-switch being flicked.

And now, with the same suddenness, he found himself standing on a rather sticky patch of what appeared to be melting asphalt as it bobbed atop what was, if Spike weren’t mistaken, a sea of lava. Above was not so much a sky so much as a single, solid blob of roiling black and grey clouds. The glowing embers were all that illuminated the space around him, and he was very glad of his vampiric sight while at the same time marveling that he was still, evidently, a vampire (he switched to game face momentarily to make certain). “Am I dead, or undead, or what?” he wondered aloud.

“You’re not dead,” a female voice informed him, and he spun around to find a short woman standing there. “Don’t know about the undead part.” She glanced around them at their environment. “As for the ‘or what’, well, yeah. I think we’re both ‘or what’.”

She had the sort of plump, curvy body that had been all the rage back when he was alive in the 19th century, but it wasn’t displayed to its best advantage in the jeans and shirt she wore. Her hair was darkish—the low light proved to thwart even his keen eyes—and fell to her shoulders in a rather rumpled mess. Her face, while plain, was intelligent and when she removed a pair of wire-rimmed glasses from atop her head and perched them on her nose to study him more closely, he knew that standing before him was a scholar.

“Ah,” he replied noncommittally. “Where are we? Is this hell?” Wouldn’t surprise him one bit—killing thousands of people and two Slayers, no matter how many years of playing with the good guys, didn’t exactly add up to the place of harps and fluffy clouds.

“Iw-n-sisi,” she replied, gazing around at the swells and flows of magma around them. “The Isle of Fire,” she clarified when Spike gazed at her in confusion. “Where the dead roam, as per ancient Egyptian legend.”

“Egyptian, huh?” He fished around the interior pockets of his duster for a pack of cigarettes and lighter; as the flame ignited the end of the fag, causing a wreath of smoke to rise over his head in a wavy (and ironic) halo, he gestured at their surroundings. “That’s new.”

She gave him a half-smile. “So you’re used to this sort of weird shit happening all the time, huh?” Beginning to walk along the strip of blackened ground, she motioned for him to join her, and they began to stroll in the direction of the orange-red glow in the distance.

He laughed, exhaling a blast of smoke into her face. She didn’t complain, only continued to watch him, so he decided to be honest with her about the nature of her new companion. “Every day’s a weird day when you’re a vampire, luv,” he commented, watching her closely.

“Vampire. Of course. Because my life’s not strange enough as it is,” she muttered, more to herself than to him. Then she peered through the gloom at his face, or more particularly, at his mouth. “You going to eat me?”

Spike took a long drag of his cigarette and tilted his head to the left. “And if I am?”

She sighed, shoulders slumping. “Then get a move on. I hate suspense.”

He surprised her by laughing. “You’re probably the type who flips right to the end of a murder mystery to learn whodunit.”

“Like I had any time to read murder mysteries,” she snorted. “With teaching, grading papers, my own classes, working on my dissertation…” That line of thought seemed to depress her, and she cut herself off abruptly. “Doesn’t matter anymore,” she said flatly. “I doubt there’s such a thing as mystery novels in Arda.” Then she looked around them again. “That is, if I ever get out of this hell-hole.”

“Arda, huh?” Spike inquired. “Where the bloody hell is Arda?”

“That’s what I wanna know,” she replied with a hint of spirit, seeming to think that if he were going to eat her, he’d have done so by now. “I was just there an hour ago.” She tripped over what looked to be a charred, dismembered hand, shuddered, and skipped to catch up to Spike, who’d just kept walking. “How did you get here?”

“Got staked,” he replied succinctly, not exactly relishing the memory and wondering idly what the reaction of the Scoobies would be when he never returned to the Hyperion that night. With a pang, he realized he’d miss them. Hm, he thought, amused. Didn’t expect that. “You?”

“Did a spell to break the power of an evil cartouche,” she replied, stumbling again and this time clutching his sleeve to keep herself upright. At his pointed look, she released him and stepped back. “It made me sleepy and when I woke up, I was with a goddess in the mother of all libraries.” The wistfulness in her voice confirmed his suspicion that she was a perennial student. “She offered me my dearest wet-dream— eternity with all those lovely, lovely books—“ she clarified at his sharp glance sideways at her “—but it would mean a dirty deal for my friends, so I had to refuse.”

“Regretting the choice?” Spike lit a second cigarette off the butt-end of the first and took a deeply satisfying drag whilst wondering idly where he was going to get his next meal in this deity-forsaken land. Apart from the schoolgirl, he’d not yet seen a glimpse of anything alive.

“Only a little,” Corinne admitted. “Never be able to live with myself afterwards, knowing what I’d done to them and their world.”

“Ah, a hero,” he replied mockingly. “Can’t get away from you white hats. Like a bloody infestation, you are.”

“I’m no hero,” she protested, her voice low and almost angry. “Heroes do things because it’s right. I only did this to avoid feeling bad. Still selfish, just less so.”

Spike quirked a brow again and, after a moment, held out the crumpled pack of cigarettes to her. “Well, Ms. I’m No Hero, fancy a fag? It’s all the rage with us evil types.”

She grinned and plucked one from the pack; it was slightly bent but didn’t seem to bother her as she allowed him, suddenly seized with an urge to be gentlemanly, to light it for her. She even curtseyed awkwardly in response to his courtly bow. “My thanks, kind sir,” she said, making him laugh.

“Spike,” he introduced himself, offering a grubby paw to shake and wondering why her eyes—green, he thought—would have sharpened at that, as if she recognized the name.

“Corinne,” she told him, shaking it before surreptitiously wiping it on her jeans, which weren’t much cleaner than his hand. Wasn’t his fault the Polgara’d bled all over him before staking him. All right, yes it *was* his fault, but he couldn’t just stand there and let it slaughter him, could he? ‘Course not.

“So, Corinne,” Spike began conversationally, “where the hell are we going?”

“Dunno,” she replied, almost cheerfully, pointing in the direction they’d been walking. “That way, it seems.”

Spike sighed. “You’ve no plan at all, do you?”

She sliced a glance at him. “Wasn’t exactly expecting to end up inside a lava lamp, you know.” She waved around them. “I came from the other direction, a few hours ago. There was a firestorm, looked like a meteor shower… lit the sky up pretty well. Thought I saw a building or something in the distance, so I began to head this way.”

Spike nodded at her sound reasoning. Squinting very hard, he could just make out the silhouette of some sort of structure, as well as some odd shapes that seemed to be moving. “Sodding hell,” he muttered. “Can you fight at all?”

“Nope,” she replied, still cheerful. “Not a bit. I know how to stop, drop and roll if I’m on fire, but that’s about it.” Her gaze sharpened on him. “Why, is there trouble?”

He sighed and scavenged through his duster once more and coming up with a machete with a chipped, but still very effective, blade as well as a pair of brass knuckles. “Here,” he said, dumping them into her outstretched hands. “Anything comes at you, you punch ‘em with all you got, hear?”

Corinne nodded, but didn’t say a word. As they drew closer, Spike was able to see that the building was actually a burnt-out shell, and milling about it was a pair of strange creatures with many long, stalk-like legs supporting its body as a spider’s would. At their feet squirmed about a half-dozen slug-things with arms but no legs, which at first sight of the newcomers began to propel themselves forward eagerly.

When they drew abreast of Spike and Corinne, he began to kill them with a single chop severing the head from the rest of the wormlike body. “Ugh,” Corinne yelled, extracting her fist from one’s doughy body, “Punching doesn’t do anything. And,” she continued, snatching her hand away from another’s mouth, “they bite! Ow! Dammit! You creepy little bastard!” She drew back her foot and kicked it so hard it sailed through the air to land on the far side of its parent. It shook its head briefly, then rushed back at her.

“Just step on them!” he shouted back, lopping off another head. “Oh, bollocks,” he added a moment later when one of the big ones advanced and, with a mighty belch, vomited forth another half-dozen of the sluggy things. He began moving more quickly, and when spider-thing number two expelled yet more of their wriggly foes, started to stomp on those he couldn’t get to with his machete.

“Ew! Ew!” Corinne was chanting with each crunch of bone and splat of innard under her runners. “Oh, god, this is just nasty. This is worse than when that homeless guy hocked on me…”

“Shut it, you!” Spike snapped as the larger of the two spider-creatures started forward. “Here comes daddy!”

Upon closer inspection, it had rather dangerous looking pincers and Spike had to dodge nimbly out of their way for a full minute before he could find the precise angle to reach between its forelegs and sever its head from its thorax, but once he did, it slumped to the ground and moved no more. The smaller of the spider-things wasn’t acting aggressive but he went over and killed it on principle, before it could spawn more slug babies. “Got ‘im!” he crowed, looking back at Corinne only to find she was stomping on the worms so quickly it looked like she was dancing a particularly strenuous version of the hokey-pokey.

“I wonder,” he said, sauntering up, “if that’s what it’s really all about. When people die, do they go to heaven and learn that it was just the hokey-pokey the whole time?”

Corinne sent him such a look of ire and disbelief that he had to laugh. She looked about as fearsome as a drowned kitten. “Why, of course I’ll join you!” he cried in the tones of a Victorian gentleman. “How delightful of you to offer!” And he grabbed her brass-knuckle-sporting hands and began to waltz her over the slug-things, laughing as they splooshed beneath his booted feet.

She began, reluctantly, to laugh. “You are such a freak.”

***

The portal deposited them at the peak of a mountain. Not a very interesting mountain, mind; mostly just brown dirt and scrub pine. The interesting thing about it was there was a path, upon which all ten of the travelers stood; following it down one side would lead you to a rather pleasant-looking area of meadows and gently rolling hills, the occasional stream winding like a lazy silver ribbon.

Down the other side of the mountain, however, was a bleak landscape leading to a black, dreary horizon; the odd boulder stood forlornly every few acres of so, but mostly there was just the path wending its way progressively deeper into the thickening gloom. The entire valley was lit with an eerie, flickering red light that seemed molten somehow, as if it had shape and volume.

Dawn sighed deeply. “Corinne’ll be down that way.”

Boromir glanced at her. “Why do you think that, sweet?”

“Well, she seems determined to get herself in as much trouble as possible. Do you really think she’s on her way down the yellow brick road to the Emerald City,” she waved to indicate the bucolic scene to the north, “or is it more likely she’s about to be boiled in oil by a tribe of murderous pygmies, or whoever lives—“ she waved to the murky land to the south “--there?”

“But what if you are wrong?” asked Legolas, his fair brow creased with concern. “It would be disastrous to seek her in one direction when she has gone another, for we know not what provision she has… she is not suited for battle, not in a world such as this.”

“No, she’s hopeless by herself,” Buffy said, looking puzzled, as if she could not comprehend how a woman could allow herself to be so clueless about keeping herself alive. “So, we break into two groups, huh?”

“That might be most wise,” Thranduil opined, squinting at the red haze. His voice, low and throbbing, sent a shiver up the spines of all the females present.

“Along what lines shall we be split?” asked Elessar. “Each group should have both sword and bow.”

Radagast looked suddenly at Arwen, and her head snapped around to return his gaze. “Yes,” she replied, “I do have some of my grandmother’s gift.”

“Excellent,” he said, and surprised them all by grinning widely. “I can amplify your powers; we can thus communicate.”

“So, Radagast in one group, Arwen in the other,” Buffy stated. “And whither Arwen goest, so doth Elessar, right, Strider?”

“Indeed,” he agreed with a faint smile at her feeble attempt to speak Olde Westronne.

“I shall not be parted from my son,” Thranduil commented idly, ambling over to a pine and staring fixedly at its skimpy branches.

That son glared at his father. “I am more than capable of protecting myself and my wife, Ada,” he replied testily. “And stop trying to talk to the trees, anyone with a teaspoon of brains can tell they do not speak to the Eldar, not in this place.”

“Be that as it may,” was the king’s indolent response, and Buffy thought she could actually *hear* her husband grinding his molars together. She sympathized with his plight—who wanted an overprotective parent along on a dangerous mission, fussing about each scrape and bruise, after all?—but she also remembered how many times she’d longed for her mother over the past eighteen years. Someday Thranduil might be gone, and this was an opportunity that Legolas would not get back again.

“That’s good,” she found herself saying, steeling herself against the faint expression of betrayal in Legolas’ crystalline eyes. “It’ll give you two time to bond.”

At the mention of the word ‘bond’ Haldir jerked, lifting his gaze from the stump he’d been contemplating. He’d not spoken once since entering the portal, and Buffy easily recognized the agony on his face—guilt, anguish, pain, despair, and a profound loneliness—because she’d once had that expression herself. She stepped to his side and gave him a swift hug. He stood stiffly, arms at his side, making no effort to return the gesture.

“We’ll find her, Haldir,” she whispered as the others carefully avoided watching them.

He blinked hard a few times, then turned his face down to hers. “I was merely concerned about being teamed with Thranduil, if you must know it, Dagnir,” he drawled with the barest hint of his old snooty tone.

“Looks like you’re with Elessar and Arwen, then,” she said cheerfully, squeezing his arm comfortingly. Elessar looked vaguely alarmed but resigned to the idea.

“That leaves us and Gimli,” Dawn piped up. “We don’t want to be separated, so we’ll go with Elessar and Arwen. You’d prefer to stay with Legolas anyway, wouldn’t you, Gimli?”

The dwarf nodded firmly. “I would not leave him alone to the tender mercies of his father,” he grumbled, and Buffy pouted.

“Alone? What am I, chopped liver? And Radagast is with us, too.”

“Certainly not,” Gimli replied heartily, clapping her on the shoulder so she staggered, needing the grinning Legolas to haul her upright. “But one’s wife is not the same as one’s comrade.”

“Is she not both?” Thranduil asked, his voice insinuating itself at the base of Buffy’s skull and almost making it itch. Lethal, she thought, and catching Dawn’s eye, knew her sister was thinking the same thing. He’s lethal. But what a way to go…

“We are here to destroy our foe,” Radagast interrupted repressively, beginning to walk the trail toward the ominous south. “Not play counselor to a marriage that is—thus far—untroubled. Though,” he continued, nailing Thranduil with a gimlet glance, “how long that trend continues has yet to be seen, if you are to be your usual meddling self.”

Thranduil fell into step beside him, hands clasped behind his back in a posture Buffy recognized as the original to Legolas’ own taking of the posture. It was clear that, with his silence, he was merely humoring the wizard, perhaps even waiting for the best time to mount a counter-attack, and Buffy heaved a sigh.

“Those two,” Dawn said worriedly, “are gonna be trouble together.”

Buffy shrugged her pack back onto her shoulders. “Yeah,” she agreed. “But at least they’ll keep each other busy, and the three of us—“ she indicated herself, Legolas, and Gimli “can actually find Corinne.” Then she turned toward the south. “Hey, you two!” she called after them, “don’t get too far ahead!” Each raised a hand in acknowledgement, the gesture so similar that she couldn’t help but laugh.

“They will either murder the other, or become closest friends ere we see the end of this quest,” Arwen said sagely, nodding when the others turned to her in surprise. “It is always the elven way,” she continued. “Erestor and Glorfindel—ai, how they despised one another when first Glorfindel was returned by Mandos— Ada and Gil-galad, Legolas and Gimli. It happens all the time. There are many songs sung about it.”

“Elves and their songs,” grumped Gimli, somewhat embarrassed to be included in such a group of illustrious warriors and counselors. “Always wailing away. A dwarf can find no peace.” He began to stomp down the path after Thranduil and Radagast.

“Oh, did Galadriel’s singing disturb you when last we were in Lothlórien?” asked Legolas, sauntering after his friend. “I will be sure to tell her that her ‘wailing’ pains you; I am sure she will trouble you with it no more.” Then he darted nimbly to the side to avoid the axe that came sailing through the air toward his head.

“If they don’t kill each other, I might,” Buffy said darkly, and tromped along behind them.

*Erestor = Elrond’s advisor
Glorfindel = died slaying a Balrog, was returned by the Valar of the dead, Mandos, to continue his fate as a warrior
Ada = father (i.e., Elrond)
Gil-galad = last high king of the Noldor; killed in the first war of the ring

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