Marchwarden: Son Of Guilin 13

Marchwarden: Son Of Guilin

Part 13

Posted: September 2005
Title: Marchwarden: Son of Guilin
Author: Kenaz

*****

The sickle blade sliced cleanly through stems, sheared stalks bleeding beads of white sap and scent. The athelas crop thrived, and vivid green plants filled his baskets to overflowing. But the feverfew faltered, languishing for lack of light. Wan yellow buds hung on spindly stalks, the very picture of defeat; an adjacent sapling had grown thick and high, strong as a soldier, its bold canopy eclipsing the garden bed.

That which grows in shadow bears paltry fruit, Galion remarked in sullen silence, pulling up one of the frail plants and examining the undersized roots and feeble flowers . He tossed it aside .

Salvaging what he could, he filled his baskets and returned to the healing houses, where he bundled the herbs and hung them to dry. Mindless work, but necessary. Delving into moist soil and feeling his blood attune to the steady pulse of the earth gladdened him; few other things did.

Casual encounters provided ephemeral distraction, balm for the lonely body if not a palliative for the soul, but even with a body warming the bed beside him, the lingering sense of humiliation did not abate. At least he had remained circumspect about the extent of his encounter with Haldir in Imladris. That was a small mercy to his beleaguered pride, which recovered slowly, kept at a safe distance from the one who pained him.

Yet keeping his distance was as unbearable in its own way as seeing him with the Marchwarden: he missed the simple companionship of his friend. Taurnil was good and loyal and quick with a smile or jest, but Haldir's absence left a palpable hole in his spirit. He cursed his rogue tongue for foolishly spelling out his affections when they would have been better left in silence. His heart would have ached no less for it, but his dignity might not have withered so pathetically.

The familiar clop of boots outside the door constricted the muscles between his shoulder blades. He busied himself assembling kits for the outgoing patrol, filling them with bandages and slings, herbs and ointments. He pulled the cork from a pot, tilting it to eye the contents, and quietly cursed. The pale yellow unguent was nearly gone. As Haldir stepped into the room, he was meting out what little remained into two smaller jars. He did not turn to greet his friend, and Haldir did not offer a salutation so much as a salvo.

"You avoid me. Why?"

What gall that Haldir could even ask, and do so with such pique! His back still turned, Galion chuckled joylessly to himself, careful not to let the warden see the acid in his smile.

"I have matters of my own to attend to. Assembling these, for example." His arm swung out towards the packs.

"I realize. I was sent for them." He would not be put off as easily as that. "You know of what I speak. You have made yourself scarce this whole season. Can you claim it mere coincidence?"

Galion's voice was taut as he tried to ignore the attempt to draw him out. "Only two of these are ready. We sent the last of the yarrow salve with Tathalion's patrol and it will be three days or more before I have enough to fully supply you." He stopped, his head drooped, his mouth opening and closing, dumb as a landed fish, as he corralled his thoughts and hemmed in the frayed edges of his unhappiness. "I did not imagine your return to us would find you returned to him."

Haldir drew back as if bitten. Though no fool to imagine his return to the Marchwarden's bed would please his companion, he saw now in Galion's refusal to meet his eyes, his persistent avoidance, his sharp tone, that he had sorely underestimated the healer's reaction. The memory of their sweet and heated parting had sustained him through lonesome nights, but time abroad had changed him. Hardened him. He understood now why Elemmakil had sent him forth, and returning stronger and wiser, he wanted the Marchwarden to see his understanding and reward it.

"'Twas not my intention to cause you grief."

Angry hands tamped tightly rolled bandages further into packs, wedging them deep in the corners. A hand gripped his arm, arresting his jabbing fist. He did not shirk the touch, though neither did he yield to it. Despite pain and shame, his body thrummed at Haldir's nearness, both longing for it and angered by it.

"Do you begrudge me my happiness?"

Hesitation. "No."

A silent indictment followed: I rue that it comes at my expense.

" No, he says, yet he cannot look me in the face," Haldir returned snidely, and was rewarded with a brief glimpse of tight grey eyes, and a countenance vacillating between misery and contempt, before Galion retreated once more to his bandages and bundles.

"Afore all else, are we not sworn brothers?" The edge in Haldir's voice softened momentarily. "I would not have that bond sundered."

Adamant eyes closed, shuttering sorrows behind heavy lids. A weary sigh. "It is not sundered."

"Then stop holding yourself aloof." Haldir tucked the finished kits under his arm. "I have more I would say to you. We will speak later."

An order, not a request. The superciliousness of it rankled Galion. Later. How easily Haldir assumed that he would make himself available later. That he would tick the days off in his mind until later became now.

Another weary sigh. His unuttered protestations fooled no one, himself least of all. He nodded, but still refused to turn; a trivial victory.

"Haldir, Rúmil... With me!"

At the Marchwarden's command, the brothers dropped from their perches, landing lightly on the ground below. The first days of the tour had passed with nothing to note but the occasional hawk wheeling in the cloudless sky or some small animal darting out from Hithaeglir's foothills, either stalking prey or becoming it. The wardens had let down their guard, talking in low tones among themselves. Elemmakil even turned a blind eye now and then to the dicing games some started to while away the idle, sunny hours. But all snapped to attention at the sound of the Marchwarden's voice.

Elemmakil squinted into the distance. The southern marches had long been quiet, but he knew full well that quiet could be deceptive; he had not forgotten the elves lost to orc arrows and the Celebrant's frigid pull only a stone's throw further down the stream. It was not yrch this day, but men who disrupted the stillness of the borders, crossing the Limlaith, likely en route from the Wold. But these were no traders; they had neither wagon nor goods.

"Riders approach," the Marchwarden told them tersely, and the brothers followed close behind him, bows at the ready, as he stepped out of the cover of the woods. They would meet the party on the Field of Celebrant, well away from the eaves of Lorien's forest, and determine their purpose.

Three riders moved toward them at a steady trot, neither rushing nor tarrying. Their dress was worn and filthy, but the horses were of quality. One man rode at the lead, carrying a boy in front of him with a pale face and lolling head. His fellows followed a horse's length behind bearing heavy bows by their sides, arrows nocked on the strings. The lead rider's sword bobbed at his hip to the rhythm of the horse's stride. Its curved lines were almost elven in style, and the Marchwarden knew it on sight as a blade of Gondorian make, and a fine one at that, an unlikely weapon for such a rough man.

"Be aware," he warned.

Even at that distance, Elemmakil's keen eye beheld froth between the horses' thighs, and heaving flanks telling of beasts hard-ridden. They carried their heads too high, champing their bits, unhappy with the heavy, unfamiliar hands that drove them. Elemmakil's sense of unease became outright alarm, yet the child in the man's arms was sore in need of aid, that much was clear, and Elemmakil took that to be the reason they came now toward the wood.

"Call out to them."

Haldir stepped forward and shouted a greeting in Westron, a language which had once felt like gravel in his throat and sounded harsh and flat to his ears, but after so many dealings with men in the North-kingdom and the South, it fell now as easily from his lips as his own.

"The boy needs care," the man at the head returned. "Come forth and help us, or does the famed hospitality of the elves not extend to mere mortals?"

The elves bristled at the provocative tone. Were it not for the child, they would have moved to eject this band forthwith.

"If you seek our hospitality, you will disarm." Behind him, Elemmakil shifted warily, his hands poised on his bowstring.

An unfriendly grin split the man's face like a wound. "But we are only seeking help for the wee child... what fear have you of us?"

Haldir looked at the child and knew he was grave, but he had doubts now that this boy belonged with these men. All the more reason to intercede. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end as the riders slowed to a walk, stepping just within arrow's range.

"You trespass here," he told them darkly. "Disarm at once or we will fire."

The lips of the leader twitched, but he made no motion suggesting he planned to comply. Behind Haldir, wood moaned as Elemmakil and Rúmil trained their bows on the interlopers. At Elemmakil's order, Haldir gave one final warning. The words had not yet cleared his lips when one of the rear riders lifted his drawn bow and released the string. Elemmakil shouted for him to drop.

Rúmil had loosed his arrow simultaneously, and the shooter was dead before his body toppled from its mount. Elemmakil's flew just behind, unseating the second rider. The lead man gouged his horse's flank with his heels, driving it forward while jerking his sword from its sheath. The child tumbled from the saddle and lay crumpled and still on the ground. Rúmil's second shot neatly pierced the rider's throat as he charged and dealt his death with blinding efficiency. The horse shrieked, strident in its terror, and bolted.

Rúmil turned and let out a wail of horror. No matter his speed, the man had released first, and his arrow had flown true.

Haldir sank to his knees, a grey-fletched bolt embedded in his chest.

Blessed Varda, not this!

Later, Galion would remember it as the day all his training failed him. He, who had triaged hundreds—nay, thousands—of wounded and dying on the arid wastes of the Dagorlad, he who had devoted himself to tending the bloody fruits of war, stood paralyzed when the litter bearing Haldir's broken body was brought before him. The Marchwarden's angry, anguished scream (" Galion, see to him!") brought him back to his senses like a slap to his face and spurred him into motion.

He helped the others hoist the litter to the table and quickly assessed the extent of his friend's injury. The arrow had gone deep, and the blood staining Haldir's lips and trickling darkly down his chin foretold a punctured lung. The shaft still projected cruelly from his chest. Cradled tightly in the canvas of the stretcher, Haldir was silent and still.

If he dies under my hand, I will surely follow... I cannot bear that burden...

A clatter of metal: another healer laying out blades and forceps, tools for probing the body's hidden places. A rending of fabric: the grey wool of Haldir's uniform cut away, exposing mottled flesh. A revelation of skin: Galion's focus pulled down...down... his purpose clear and renewed. The noise of the infirmary receded to a faraway din, drowned out by the cries of flesh voicing its umbrage at the intrusion of wood and steel, blood hissing at its own loss. Haldir's body gave up its secrets to Galion's touch, demanded the strength of his hands to return the vitality now fading. Galion drew in a bracing breath and lifted his scalpel.

Do not let me fail him... Elbereth guide my hand.

The blade honed to a perfect edge split tissue and viscera with faultless precision, a living extension of the unwavering hand that wielded it.

Rúmil stood still as stone until the doors of the surgery closed; silent tears swelled to broken sobs when Orophin, wild-eyed and breathless, hurtled into the corridor, having covered the distance between his own post and the healing halls with strides swift as a mearh. At the sight of blue eyes so like to Haldir's, so like to the ones he had watch turn filmy and sightless, the floodgates of Rúmil's horror broke wide.

"I failed him, Orophin!" A desolate howl. "I was not fast enough. That whoreson should have been dead ere he could draw his shot!"

"You followed your orders. You took the man down. You..."

"...We will lose him..."

"Nay!" Orophin pushed Rúmil away, locking their eyes in a stare tight as the fingers he shackled around the other's arms. "Still your tongue! We can ill afford a negative thought." His voice softened and he enfolded Rúmil once again, equally needful of a brother's touch. "Think you that Galion would allow him to fall? He would gladly offer Mandos his own soul before letting Haldir enter the Halls."

The sky darkened and night fell, and still the healers did not emerge from behind their closed doors. The two brothers waited alone in their miserable silence.

In the darkness of the empty barrack, Elemmakil paced.

Rúmil and Orophin, enmeshed in shared consternation, failed to notice his departure. He could not bear to linger in those gently lit halls, in torchlight muted with curved shades as if to lull one into a sense of soft wellbeing that was never guaranteed, to pacify those who waited on one side of the impassable door while on the other, a beloved might even at that moment be slipping cold into Námo's grasp. Those dim lights seemed a subtle ambuscade to him, a pretty mask veiling death.

He did not return to his quarters, though Tathalion had already relieved him of his duties. He knew he would find no respite there, only guilt that he should have comfort while his lover lay poised between life and death.

There is no greater treachery than violence on a cloudless day.

Once, the Gates of Summer opened to just such a day, a pristine dawn holding all the promise of the season. His first, his truest love died on such a day. Yes, the treason of clear and windless mornings was the most grievous of all.

How could an event unfold so quickly, yet with each second stretching for so agonizing an eternity? He had kept his eyes on the lead rider and the injured child, had not seen the second man move until he had already begun to lift his weapon. And when that arrow flew, he knew its trajectory but could do nothing to stop it. Rúmil's reaction had been so blindingly fast, so instinctive, that even as he screamed his warning to Haldir, he imagined Haldir out of harm's way, spared by his brother's lightning reflexes. His own weapon spat its deadly fury a heartbeat later.

But turning his head, he saw Haldir's knees buckle under him, as if he was kneeling in supplication, the strong body folding as it fell... no, not fell, sank... to the green grass of the field.

Haldir's face had gone grey, his lips blanched. The unnatural pallor stunned Elemmakil, and in that instant he saw not Haldir, but another grey face, a body sliding from Tuor's arms and sinking to the ground with preternatural grace even as his shattered shield-arm hung obscenely twisted at his side. When he saw Ecthelion for the very last time, amid the smoke and chaos of a city under siege, his lover's—his love's-- skin had been the same lusterless grey. Grey, the color of an arrow's fletching, the color of steel, the color of imminent death.

Elemmakil had slapped Haldir's cheeks hard, bade the warden look at him. For a brief moment, swimming eyes had stilled and met his own, and Elemmakil almost believed Haldir might smile then, make some jest and jerk away offending shaft, a harmless child's toy, until his entire body was wracked with a painful cough, frothy blood flying from his mouth and spattering warmly across Elemmakil's cheek. His eyes no longer reflected bright sky, but rolled backward, pale as clouds, as he slipped into unconsciousness.

And it had all been for naught

The boy they thought to save was already dead, his slim neck snapped like brittle tinder long before his fall. A journeyman engraver traveling with wife and child to Gondor met a brutal fate on the road for a pouch of coin and some pretty horseflesh. If death had been the only cruelty the brigands had meted out to the youngling, he had been lucky. His mother's body been violated repeatedly even as she lay dying. The corpse of the hapless child proved useful bait for luring other wary travelers into incautious concern, and their ends were just as violent, their pockets picked just as clean. The villains' bodies were piled and burned like yrch. The elves refused to consign the innocent to the same pyre and buried his little body in the mortal fashion within the wood with a tiny cairn to mark it; no family remained to claim him. The ill-gotten gains—gold and silver coins, some poor soul's wedding band, the Gondorian sword—were left on the far side of the Limlaith at the outskirts of the Wold: let men keep the baubles they held more dear than lives; elves had no need of them. The taint of death rendered shining metal dull and colorless as dirt.

Elemmakil pivoted. A lone candle burnished the foliate plates of a cuirass. He looked at the orderly rows of armor hung in narrow stalls, the polished helms perched on shelves above, each vaguely resembling the form of a body even as it rested inert in the shadowed room. The Galadhrim guardians did not dress in armor to guard their borders; they had no need of it. Armor was for glorious battlefield campaigns, pennants held aloft and war-horns blaring, not for three dilapidated men and a dead child.

He licked his lips, caught off guard by the taste of iron on his tongue. Haldir's blood. He sank down on a bench, all strength sapped from his limbs, and pushed the heels of his hands into his eyes, seeking a deeper darkness than even the lightless room allowed.

Outside, candles still burned in the windows of the healing house, but he would not return there. Not tonight, nor on the morrow. Whatever news there was would reach him. He could not bear again to see grey skin and stillness and feel a new burden of loss compounding an ancient ache.

Drops of cool water wrung from a rag blossomed in concentric circles. Reflected in the basin, Galion's image distorted and rippled on the crests of tiny waves.

"Did she ever tell you I came to sit with you each day? I did."

Haldir's voice came back to him, and the earthy scent of damp canvas, as he thought of the night he had told Haldir of his disastrous first healing, and the way his heart danced in its rhythm when Haldir revealed he had sat at Galion's side quietly bargaining for his recovery.

"I held your hand and begged you to wake. I even promised to give you the little knife my father had given me for my begetting day that year if you would open your eyes."

The room was silent, save for Haldir's shallow, labored breathing, every inhalation leaving too long an abeyance before the next. Galion's heart hung in the spaces between those breaths, suspended in its rhythm while it waited for the next inspiration, beating in slow sympathy with Haldir's debilitated lungs.

When at last the barbed arrowhead had been dislodged, blood spurted in a bright jet from the wound, and Haldir's breath had wheezed through the hole. The injury was grave, but Haldir had not succumbed, not yet. Galion and the others had used every means at their disposal—scalpels, potions, the energy of their bodies—to hold his spirit to its wounded house.

I have no little knife to tempt you. There is nothing of mine that would coax you back, though I would give my very life in trade, should you ask it.

And now, there was naught but waiting with the memory of unaddressed bitterness between them. Haldir remained in the heavy sleep induced with ancient phrases murmured softly by the one who would attend him all through that first, most critical night, and every night thereafter. Galion traced the lines on Haldir's brow, slightly furrowed as if in thought even while sleeping ( Or in pain, Galion worried, deflated). With every touch, he summoned the strength he carried within, the light and warmth that coalesced in his body, given to him by earth and air, by fire and water, by the very breath of Iluvatar, and willed it go forth into Haldir.

Please...

Viewing from the threshold, Taurnil watched Galion at his vigil with a heart that ached for his friends, and ached for his own silent and unacknowledged love. Galion's eyes were now ringed in bluish circles. He had not seen the healer so overstrung since the final bloody days in Mordor. Steam from the bowl he carried wafted up, a diffuse filter over his vision, and in his mind, a memory revealed itself like secret treasure: the image of Galion curled up like a child on the hard ground in the corner of a tent, grasping the few moments of slumber he could find. Even with the din of battle assaulting his ears, Taurnil had found a moment's peace in watching Galion sleep.

"Even healers must take rest and nourishment some time. Even you."

Galion looked up and smiled wanly, inclining his head in thanks when his friend placed the bowl of hot stew his hands and a hunk of oven-warm bread on the bedside table.

"It is good."

"I am but the messenger." He leaned down and touched the unconscious warden's pale shoulder. The skin was hot. "The brothers are still sore afraid for this one. Alquonís has made it her sole vocation to feed their fears into submission, and ours as well."

Galion looked pleased. "Orophin would do well to marry her. She is as fine of spirit as she is fair of face."

"Aye," Taurnil nodded, moving to stand nearer to the healer as he ate. "He has hinted that should this crisis pass, he will wait no longer to betroth himself to her."

Did you hear? Galion spoke in his mind to the taciturn form before him. Your brother will marry. Is that not reason enough to return to us?

"Please, friend...take some rest."

Taurnil's fingers brushed his cheek and he leaned, exhausted, into the touch.

"Aye," he let the spoon clatter against the side of the empty bowl. "I can do no more tonight." After leaning over the cot to kiss unresponsive lips, he let Taurnil's strong hand guide him away from the healing houses and into his bed. Exhaustion claimed him ere the sheets even settled over his body. He would never know that Taurnil sat and watched him well into the night.

Many days passed, and each one found Galion at Haldir's side, surrounded by the accreting evidence of his extended presence, the half-empty mugs of tea gone cold, the ever-present basin of cool water and damp cloths, keeping dutiful watch over his charge and holding court with the visitors who stopped each day to ask after him. His brothers hovered like rain clouds, though Alquonís' tender ministrations erased the dark circles from beneath Orophin's eyes, and the softened carriage of Rumil's shoulders spoke of a lover's attentive hands working tension and sorrow out of the muscles there; proof of Feredir's concern even if he never entered Haldir's room. Tathalion and the other members of the patrol came when they were able. Taurnil came often, as much for Galion's sake as Haldir's. Only one was conspicuous by his absence.

As Haldir's healing progressed, he unwittingly fought the ensorcelled sleep that held him, and sometimes, for a brief moment or two, he would break the shell of slumber, moaning or thrashing weakly on the cot. He would cry out, and always it was the same name that split the night, that pierced Galion's heart like a grey-fletched arrow even as he mopped the fevered face and soothed him in low tones.

"He is away at the borders, olórin-nin. He cannot yet return." Each time, his voice was soft and even, but each time, anger rose like bile in his throat at the taste of the lie spreading over his tongue, soured further by the fact that he should be forced to utter untruths at all. He had messages sent to the Marchwarden, messages delivered face to face and hand to hand, but still Elemmakil did not come. Until today.

At last the hero arrives! And after a mere fortnight of waiting for him to make his entrance. Wretched caitiff.

Standing silently in the doorway, Elemmakil assumed the healer registered his presence, though he did not acknowledge it; the pale form on the bed registered nothing. Elemmakil watched Galion perch on the cot, saw him taking in Haldir's ashen visage not with eyes assaying injury, but with the look of a heart forlorn. The gentle traverse of fingers over a barely-rising chest did not move with the steady purpose of healing, but restively, in the uneasy way of every lover who has ever held a bedside vigil, helplessly waiting. Galion's hands were listlessly employed in petting and stroking because nothing else remained for them to do. Elemmakil rebuked himself for the jealousy roused by the healer's intimacy.

His lover's face was pallid and gaunt. His lips, those beautiful, sensual lips, were drained of all color, almost invisible on the shadowed planes of his face. His eyes were closed and set too deep. Elemmakil thought it would unnerve him, to see Haldir's eyes shuttered like the dead, but it was better, he now thought, than seeing them milky and unfocused, rolling in their sockets. The dressing on his chest gave a false reassurance, the devastation beneath skin and behind bone hidden by a bandage of pristine white, not even the tiniest fleck of blood remaining to hint at what it concealed. All that strength and virility, the newly minted boldness that already had a tendency to overspill into arrogance, the infectious laugh like tumbling water: stilled and silenced.

When at last the healer looked up, his face immediately contracted in a glare of accusation.

" Mae govannen, Marchwarden. How good of you to stop in." Galion's voice was low and hostile.

Elemmakil overlooked the discourteous greeting. "How does he fare?"

"As well as can be expected. Your concern for his wellbeing is heartwarming."

Fire flared in the Marchwarden's eyes. "I need not bear your insolence, pup. There were reasons for my absence. I am not accountable to you."

"Ah! There were reasons! This is encouraging news! I thought perhaps only had use for him when his hands held enough strength to grasp your cock."

Elemmakil held back from pouncing on the healer and choking him into unconsciousness. The force required for such physical restraint brought his voice out roaring. "You dare such an insult?"

"I dare nothing!" Galion growled, feral and undaunted. "I am not yours to command and owe you no allegiance! You forget where you are. You will not raise your voice here, Captain." He grabbed the basin from the table pushed his way into the hall. Lukewarm water sloshed over the side and splashed across Elemmakil's boots as he passed, returning dusky brown leather to black where layers of accumulated dirt dissolved and vanished.

He cornered the healer in the small pump room where he had stalked away to rinse and refill the basin. Galion threw an angry glance over his shoulder and set down the bowl.

"He nearly died that first night. He lost too much blood. We thought he might lose the lung as well. It took all of our efforts to keep him with us. Why were you not here? If not as his lover, than as his captain. You had a duty to him and you have failed in it."

Elemmakil stiffened, attempting to reign in his temper. Had it been any other, he might have unburdened himself, sought some sort of absolution, explained his absence in all its pathetic grief, but he would not debase himself to his rival. He forced his voice into a semblance of neutrality.

"I thank you for the care you gave him. He could have been in no better hands than yours. But your care as a healer does not extend to knowing my whereabouts or questioning my actions."

Galion stared at him in disbelief. "Are you so cold? You are his lover, yet you care so little for his life or death that you would not even inconvenience yourself with a visit until now, whereas I would have given my life to save him!"

"Aha!" The Marchwarden sneered, shoving the younger elf hard against the wall and pinning him there with a furious hand to his throat. The healer neither flinched nor struggled, but his face was drawn with pure outrage. The basin wobbled precariously on the countertop before crashing to the floor, shattering across the stone slabs. "I should have known this had less to do with the state of Haldir's health than with the state of your precious, wounded pride!"

Two of the other healers appeared in the doorway, appalled, but a hard look from Galion and they collared their instinct to intercede and left him to settle his own affairs.

"Do not turn your miserable scorn on me because he does not look upon you with eyes of desire!" The Marchwarden hissed his wrath. "It is not my fault you want more from him than he will give."

Galion gripped Elemmakil's wrist, prizing off his fingers and pushing him away with a strength that took the Marchwarden by surprise. "I want only for his happiness!" The healer's eyes flashed adamant and steel, hard in their resolve and frigid in their bearing. The softness of his voice belied a viper's venom beneath. "It is your name he cries so wretchedly in the night, yet it falls to me to weave some palatable excuse as to why you do not attend him, because giving him the truth of it is too cruel!" He erupted in a bitter bark at the infuriating irony, a shard of pottery slicing his thumb as he bent to pick up the scattered pieces. "In all our years of friendship, I have never once lied to him. And now I must, and my lies are on your behalf. Speak not to me of pride!"

Galion straightened him self, took a breath. His gaze trained narrowly on Elemmakil.

"For all your battle glory, and all your storied bravery, you hide from him like a craven." He dropped the broken bowl into a waste bin and wiped his wet and bloodied hands on his apron. "I may not have his love, Elemmakil, but you are unworthy of it."

* * *

Golodhrim = "Deep Elves," the Noldor
Naugrim = Dwarves

Yén = 144 years
Daro = Halt
Telain= plural of talan
Elleth = female elf
Mellon = friend
Avo = Don't
Eryn Galen = Greenwood the Great (later: Mirkwood)

Athelas = Kingsfoil; a plant with healing properties
Limlaith = The river Limlight, a tributary of the Celebrant.
Mearh = Singular of Mearas, the noble horses brought to Middle-Earth by Oromë
Olórin-nin = "my dreamer,"
Caitiff = archaic word for coward or disgrace
Mae govannen = well met, a greeting

*****

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