Cermië 4, 2965
The gates of Moria had shut behind her and left her alone under the whole open sky, and for a day she could hardly bear how much of it there was. After the deep — the stone overhead, the dark that never lifted, the constant near echo of dwarvish voices — the sheer roofless silence of the world was almost too much to hold, and she walked the first miles half-flinching at the size of it, the way a prisoner flinches at daylight. She settled the straps of her pack — the mithril in it, the brazen head of Dero wrapped at the bottom — and set her feet north and east, and made herself remember that she loved this: the open road, the wind, the being alone in the wide green world. Her journey to Rivendell had begun, and the walking of it began, slowly, to give her back to herself.
By midday she had put good miles between herself and the mountain, and the air seemed to lighten with every one of them, as though Moria's weight were a thing she could leave behind on the road if she only walked far enough. She followed a narrow stream north, its small talk a company after the deep's dead quiet, and when evening came she took shelter under an overhang in a stand of birches and made a low fire, enough to keep the chill off and no more. Sleep came hard. Behind her eyes the deep was still with her — the drowned halls, the cold wraith-stare of the lady in the tower, the weight of all that dark — and she lay a long while watching the flames before it let her go. But she had learned long since that grief and fear were things a ranger carried, not things a ranger stopped for; and each day's walking north was a day's walking away from the mountain, and she took what strength she could from that.1
The second day took her up into the rolling hills of Eregion, and here the land itself had a memory. This had been Hollin once, the country of the Elven-smiths, and something of the Firstborn lingered in it still — in the ruins that stood grey and quiet on the hillsides, holly grown wild over fallen stone, the bones of an age of making that the world had let fall. She skirted the old places and kept her eyes sharp, for empty country is not the same as safe country. By mid-afternoon she came to the Loudwater, running high and cold, and rested on its bank to fill her skins with her bow across her knees, then crossed careful over slick stones, the icy water biting through her boots, and pressed on with her pace quickened by the thought of what lay ahead.
The third morning came grey and low, heavy cloud piling in the north and the far mutter of thunder in it. She moved swiftly through dense woodland, the smell of pine and wet earth around her, and let her mind go to the errand she bore — Balin's gift, his written questions, and what Elrond might make of a Ranger of the North arriving out of Moria with the brazen head of a dead thing in her pack. Late in the day the trees gave way, and she came out onto a ridge above the Fords of Bruinen, the river loud below her. There was an ancientness to the ford, a sense of the land holding the memory of every traveller who had ever crossed here toward the Last Homely House; and beyond it the hills climbed toward the hidden valley, and the sight of them urged her the last miles on.
She came down out of the wild to the edge of Rivendell as the early light was turning the valley gold, and the relief of it went through her like warmth into cold hands — and then a figure stepped from the shadow of the trees: an elf with a bow half-drawn, his gaze as keen as the arrow he did not quite loose.
"I come in peace," she said, steady though she was worn to the bone. "I bear a gift for Lord Elrond, sent by Balin of Moria."
His eyes held on her a long moment. Then he lowered the bow and inclined his head. "Follow me," he said, and named himself Belegon; and though his voice was courteous she felt his watchfulness on her the whole way down as the valley opened before her — Rivendell unfolding out of the folded hills, serene and otherworldly, the sound of falling water everywhere and the light like nothing in the world above.
They took her in with a warmth she had half-forgotten the world could offer. She was given rooms, and told Lord Elrond would see her the next day, and that evening she let herself rest for the first time in longer than she could easily reckon — the hearth's warmth, the scent of flowers on the cool air, the soft gold of candlelight — and felt the long weight of Moria begin, at last, to lift. Her road was at rest. She had come up out of the dark into a place of wisdom and sanctuary, and for one night that was enough.
Cermië 10, 2965
Her audience with Elrond came on her sixth morning in the valley. She gave him Balin's missive, and then the brazen head of Dero — the relic said to whisper secrets under certain moons — and told him the tale of Moria: the dark, the drowned halls, the ledge and the fortress and the cost of them. Elrond listened with a measured, ancient patience, and when she had done he said only, "You have done much in the service of many, Celenneth. Rest now. Your road has been long, and you will need your strength for what is still to come." And for the first time in weeks she let herself believe it, and rested.
Five days the valley gave her, and they mended more than her body. Her wounds closed under Elven care and her weariness eased, but Rivendell had a way of quieting the mind as much as the flesh, so that even the Shadow she had carried out of Moria loosened its hold. And yet the peace of the place only sharpened her sense of the trouble beyond it; she knew the reprieve would not hold. When the summons came again she was almost ready for it.
Elrond waited in the great hall, at a carved table spread with maps and old tomes, and gestured her to sit. "You have served not only the dwarves but the greater balance of Middle-earth," he said. "But there is more that must be done." He unfolded a map, its edges worn and its markings still bright. "The Shadow reaches far beyond Moria. My scouts bring troubling word from the south — orcs, and worse than orcs, stirring near the Gap of Rohan, and I fear for the Free Peoples there. I would send my own, but your feet know the wild places, and your recent deeds mark you well suited to this."
"What would you have me do, my lord?"
"Go south through the wilderness, toward the western banks of Anduin. There you will find a trusted ally — Radagast the Brown, who is wise in the ways of the wild and has been tracking these same dark movements. Between you, learn the truth of this threat."
Her heart quickened at the name. She had heard of the reclusive wizard, spoken of in something like awe among the Rangers. "And if the threat proves dire?"
"Radagast will know the road to take. Yours is to see the word reaches him, and to aid him in the uncovering of it. Be swift, and be cautious — do not linger where the Shadow lies thickest." He drew out a small silver-bound book and set it in her hands. "This holds knowledge he may find useful — accounts of old magics that may stand against what is waking in the dark. Guard it with your life."
She took it, its cool weight a plain reminder of what she now carried. "I will not fail you."
He smiled faintly, though his eyes did not lose their worry. "I do not think you will. Go, rest, and make ready. The road will call soon enough."
The next evening she came before him a last time with a satchel over her shoulder, and set it on the table and opened it: the mithril of Moria, twenty pieces gleaming faintly in the candlelight. "This is mine, my lord, out of the deep — but it is no use to me. I am a ranger, not a smith; I cannot make it into anything worth the carrying. I would leave it to you and your people, who have the skill to shape it as it deserves."
Elrond's brows rose as his fingers brushed one gleaming piece. "A gift of mithril is a rare thing. It carries the strength of the mountains and the echo of an age long gone. And what would you ask of us in return?"
She hesitated only a moment. "A horse. One swift and sure. Beyond that I trust your judgement to give what aid you think wise."
"Your humility becomes you, and your asking is fair." He turned to an attendant, who went and returned, and the gifts were laid before her: a leather map of the southern country, marked with the elves' own paths and safe havens; a healing draught brewed by the healers of the valley, to call back strength in a dire hour; and a light elven cloak, woven to take the colour of forest and hill and turn aside both weather and unfriendly eyes. "These, and the horse, will serve you on the road," Elrond said. "The mithril will not be wasted. Should you return, you may find it made into something greater."1
They brought the horse to her in the morning: a tall silver-grey steed, his mane catching the light like moonlit water, calm-eyed and sure on his feet even as he took her measure and she took his. Nimroch, his keepers named him — Pale Horse, in the Grey-elven tongue — a mount of Rivendell's own raising, steady under fear and uncanny in his sense of the way. He suffered her hand on his neck, and she felt, absurdly, that she had been given not a tool but a companion, and was glad of it; the road south would be long, and she had walked too much of the world alone.2
There was one thing more to do before she left the valley. That night, in the star-quiet of her chamber with her sword leaning at the table's edge, she drew a sheet of parchment toward her and sat a long while with the quill trembling in her hand. She had faced orcs and wraiths and the deep of Moria without a pause; this was harder. Her mind kept going back to Bree — the hearth-warmth of the Prancing Pony, the laughter spilling out its door, and Orlen in the middle of it, who had a way of reminding her that there was more to a life than the road and the gathering dark.
She dipped the quill, and began.
Dear Orlen,
I hope this finds you well, and Bree as full of cheer as I remember. My road has taken me far — through ruins and darkness and places I think no one has walked in an age. And yet when I think of home it is not the wilds that come to me, but you. I cannot tell you the half of what I have seen; there are things I must keep even from you. Perhaps one day I will tell you all of it. For now I will say only that I have found purpose in this work — but it is the thought of what I might come back to that gives me strength for it. Take care of yourself. I would not forgive you if I returned to find you unwell.
Yours, Celenneth
She folded it and sealed it with wax, and pressed the Rangers' sigil into the soft red of it, and gave it to one of Rivendell's messengers to carry north to Bree. Then she stood at the window a while, looking out over the dark valley toward a horizon she could not see, and did not let herself wonder too long what answer might come, or when, or whether the road would ever bring her back to read it. That was tomorrow's country. In the morning she would ride south.
Cermië 17, 2965
Dawn came gold over Rivendell as she saddled Nimroch, and the horse stood easy under her hands, ears forward, as ready for the road as she was. "This is our way now," she told him, low, cinching the last strap. "Let's see where it takes us." A touch of her heels and they went, out of the hidden valley and up its winding paths, the falling water and the golden halls dropping away behind them until the wide wilds of Eriador opened ahead and Rivendell was only a green memory folded into the hills.
The second day took them south through rolling country where the grass grew long and the wildflowers brushed her stirrups, and the land was quiet — a comfort and a warning both, for the wild has a way of going still before it shows you why. Nimroch earned his keep already, finding a narrow deer-trail through a thicket that spared them a hard rocky climb; and near a river-crossing she read the small signs of a country still its own — game-trails, a fox's den, no taint of Shadow on any of it — and let herself rest an hour under a weathered oak with something almost like hope.
It did not last the night. Sleep took her under the stars and gave her the first of the dreams. She stood in a misty wood where the trees climbed impossibly high, their bare branches clawing at a sky the colour of old blood. Something moved in the mist ahead — figures that flickered and were gone, and one that came closer and stayed, shrouded, its hand rising toward her not in kindness but in warning, or in accusation; she could not tell which. The cold came down. A drumbeat started somewhere, low and slow, and quickened until it was her own heart trying to break its way out of her, and out of the mist on every side a whisper came, faint and clear at once: The road bends, but the shadow waits. She woke with a sharp breath. The fire was embers, the dark heavier than it had been, and Nimroch stood stiff-legged nearby with his ears working, feeling her unease or his own.1
The third day the dream rode with her. The wood grew close and old, the branches knitting overhead until the trail ran in a green twilight even at noon, and Nimroch's ears would not settle. It was in a narrow glade that she heard it — the snap of a twig, the whisper of voices — and her hand was on her sword before she had finished thinking it.
Four came out of the trees, ragged and patched and armed, moving with the deliberate spread of men who had done this before. Their leader was wiry, with a cruel easy smile. "Well met, traveller," he said, all false warmth. "You're carrying more than you need. Why not lighten the load?"
"I've no quarrel with you." Her voice was level. "Let me pass, and there'll be no trouble."
He chuckled, low. "I don't think that's yours to decide." One of the others began to drift toward her flank.
She read them the way she read a warg-pack — ragged, yes, but dangerous, and overconfident with the overconfidence of the desperate. She gave Nimroch a step forward, hands loose and away from her weapons, and tried them once more with words. "I've nothing worth your trouble. Let me by, and find easier prey."
For a breath the leader weighed it. Then his smile widened and he stepped in front of her — and one of his men lunged, a hand grabbing for her cloak. Nimroch reared; she twisted with him and came down with her sword already drawn, the blade catching a shaft of light through the leaves. "Enough." It cracked like a whip, and the men flinched — but the leader recovered and came at her with a dagger, and then there was no more talking.
It was short and hard. She moved with the plain economy of someone who had done this too often to make a show of it, and Nimroch fought with her, wheeling and lashing out with iron-shod hooves, and in a handful of heartbeats the four were on the ground — disarmed, bruised, none of them dead. She had killed easily enough when the road demanded it; it did not demand it here, only desperate men who had turned their hunger on whoever looked weak.2 She bound their hands, took their crude weapons and a tattered map marked with symbols she did not know, and rode on, the weight of the thing settling on her as it always did, even when the blade stayed clean.
The land changed as she went south, and not for the better. The trees thinned and twisted; she came on a patch of earth scorched as if by fire, claw-marks raked into the bark of an old oak, the faint reek of decay riding the wind. Nothing moved when she stopped to listen — but the sense of being watched did not leave her. That evening, gathering firewood, her boot turned up a small iron pendant crudely shaped like an eye, cold in her hand and stirring the same low wrongness in her chest that the dreams had left. She nearly threw it in the stream. Instead she wrapped it in cloth and stowed it deep, because a thing that felt like that was a thing worth understanding before she was rid of it.3
The dream came again that night, and it had grown. No misty wood this time but a black endless plain under a starless sky, the ground cold and wet as a bog though no water touched her, the wind carrying broken words in a tongue she did not know. A shape loomed ahead, vast and never the same shape twice — a towering figure, a swarm of dark wings, a hunger with no edges — and the whispers ran together into one terrible voice: You carry light... but light is swallowed. The ground opened under her and she fell, and there was no bottom, only the dark and its laughter and her own scream that made no sound. She woke bolt upright with her hand on her sword. What light? What shadow? The night gave her no answer, and she did not sleep again before dawn.
The southern country made her earn every league after that. A storm caught her on the fifth day, rolling in black off the horizon and turning the trail to a mire, the rain coming in sheets that shrank the world to a few grey yards. But Nimroch was sure where the ground was treacherous, and she found an overhang to wait out the worst of it, and in the leavings of some long-gone wayfarer's camp beneath it a small mercy — dry blankets and a bundle of preserved food, left behind and still good. When the rain slackened she pressed on to a river swollen brown and roaring where it should have been an easy ford, and led Nimroch to a narrower place and picked a line across mossy stones that stood just above the race, and made the crossing careful and whole. The storm broke as she reached the far bank, the sky clearing to a sunset of gold and crimson, and she made her camp weary and quietly triumphant — having taken what the road and the weather had thrown, and come through it.4
The next morning was washed clean, crisp and pine-scented, and she gave herself an hour of it. She brushed the mud from Nimroch's pale coat, murmuring to him — you carried us well; no finer horse has walked this road — and he leaned into it, and something in the plain animal warmth of that steadied her more than any wisdom of Elrond's had. Then she washed her road-filthy clothes in the gentled river and laid them on a sun-warm rock to dry, and, finding herself alone with the water and the light, shed the rest and stepped in. The cold stole her breath and she welcomed it; she ducked under and let the current carry off the sweat and the weariness and, it seemed, a little of the dreams' weight besides, and came up gasping and slicking her auburn hair back from her face, feeling for the first time in days truly her own again. She floated a while, light in the water, simply being — a small grace, and she had learned to take the small graces where the road offered them, for it did not offer many. Then she dressed, and Nimroch snorted at her from the clearing's edge as if to remind her of the miles, and she laughed at him and tied back her hair and swung up into the saddle, renewed, and rode on south toward whatever the dreams were warning her of.
Cermië 22, 2965
The land began to tell her a story as the sun climbed, and she had spent too long reading such stories to ignore it. Hoofprints where there should be none. A branch snapped and hanging wrong. The thin thread of woodsmoke on a wind that carried, beneath it, something she liked less. She slowed, and read.
The story led her first to an abandoned camp behind a hill — a fire lately doused, a meal left half-eaten and scattered, boot-prints going west in a hurry, and at the clearing's edge a dried dark stain that was not spilled wine. Whoever had been here had left fast, and not all of them on their own feet. Curiosity had always burned brighter in her than caution; she gathered Nimroch's reins and turned west, and followed.
It was faint tracking, the kind only a trained eye holds — trampled grass, a drop of blood here and there, the small violences a passage leaves on the land — and she went slow and careful, Nimroch stepping soft behind her as though he felt the tightness in her. The shadows drew long. The trail brought her to a thicket where the branches twisted together like grasping hands, and she went in on foot, leading the horse, her hand resting at her sword.
Around a bend the trees opened on a clearing and the leavings of a fight: scattered arrows, a broken shield, the flat stench of death. Two men lay crumpled at its center. One wore mismatched armour and had died with a crude spear in his hand, his face lost under his helm and the dusk. The other was plainly but well dressed, and cruelly used by whatever had killed him. She knelt by the armoured one, and her fingers found a scrap of cloth pinned to his sleeve — a crude sigil, an eye — and something went cold in her that she had learned, now, to trust. The same mark. The same wrongness she carried wrapped in her pack.
Fresh tracks led on west, heavier than before, as though someone had come through here after the killing and taken something with them. She weighed it a moment, hand on her hilt, Nimroch pawing the ground beside her. Then she went on, quiet, into denser wood where the earth gave way to rock and the sign grew hard to hold, and a thin fog came down and closed the world to arm's length, and the smell of smoke thickened and turned — wood, and beneath it a sharper reek she did not let herself name.
The fire showed as a smear of glow through the trees at last. She left Nimroch tied to a low branch with a hand on his neck, and went the rest of the way as a shadow among shadows.
A rough ring of stones, a dying fire, two men hunched close and talking low and tense — one nursing a dark-stained arm, the other worrying at a dagger and glancing again and again into the trees. Bandits, poorly armed and poorly kept, and dangerous for all that in the way cornered things are dangerous. Near the fire lay a crude sack with its takings spilling out — tarnished silver, a small purse, a woman's brooch — and on the far side of the camp, half in shadow, a third figure: a woman, bound at the wrists and gagged, pale but sharp-eyed and very much awake. The sight of her put an edge on Celenneth's resolve and burned off the last of her hesitation. Whatever these men had done, they were not keeping this one.1
She went round the ring the long way, tree to tree, out of the firelight, until she was at the captive's back. The woman flinched as she came near; Celenneth pressed a finger to her lips, and knelt, and set her keen blade to the knots — worn rope, but strong — and cut through wrist and ankle in a few silent strokes. The woman drew a shaking breath of relief and rubbed her wrists, her eyes going to the bandits and back. "Stay quiet," Celenneth breathed against her ear, "and follow me. Now."
The woman nodded, tentative but quick to obey, and Celenneth led her back the way she had come, careful as before. Nimroch was where she had left him, ears pricking as the two of them came out of the dark. She got the woman up first and swung on behind her, and the horse stood like stone while they mounted, as if he too understood what silence was worth just then. Then she turned him and they went, quiet grace beneath them, away from the fire and out into the wide safe dark — and only when the camp was well behind, past sight and past hearing, did she let herself breathe.
The woman turned, still trembling. "Thank you," she whispered, shaky and sincere. "I thought I was done for."
"You're safe now." A faint smile. "Who are you, and what were you doing out here?"
The woman hesitated, her eyes on the black trees sliding past. "Linnea. We were attacked on the road — those men. They killed my father, and took me." Something cracked and steadied in her voice at once. "I didn't think anyone would come."
"The roads aren't safe these days." Celenneth kept her own voice even, though the plain grief in the woman's went into her somewhere and lodged. "We'll find you a proper refuge."
She found them a hollow under an ancient oak as the moon climbed, and made Linnea a rough bed of dry leaves and moss, and the woman lay down and was asleep almost before she had finished, exhaustion taking her all at once. Nimroch stood sentinel at the edge of the light. Celenneth crouched by the cold camp with her sword across her lap and her eyes moving over the dark, and did not sleep; the bandits would find their captive gone by now, and desperate men sometimes chose to follow. Once Linnea stirred and her face pinched as though the dream had teeth, and Celenneth reached over and drew the cloak up over her shoulders. "Rest easy," she said, soft, to a woman who could not hear her. "You've been through enough." And she kept the watch through the cold hours, sharp-eared and still, while the forest gave up nothing but the small rustlings of its own night-creatures, and the stranger she had pulled out of the dark slept on beside her.
Cermië 23, 2965
Dawn came at last through the canopy, and Celenneth let herself unclench for the first time since the fire. She stretched the stiffness out of a body that had held one posture all night, and looked over to find Linnea surfacing from sleep.
"Good morning." The woman's voice was thick with it. "Did you… stay awake? All of it?"
"It was needed." A small nod. "We'll move quickly today. Just in case."
Linnea glanced around at the daylit wood as though it might still hold the men who had taken her, but something in Celenneth's plain calm seemed to settle her. "I'll do whatever you think best," she said, and the gratitude in it was almost too much to sit under.
They went briskly, Nimroch sure on the hidden trails Celenneth chose — the ones most travellers never found, and the bandits' pursuit, if it came, would not either. By noon the wood opened on a meadow full of wildflowers with a clear cold stream winding through it, and she let Linnea rest while Nimroch drank his fill, and for a while the peace of the place did its quiet work on them both; Linnea even found a faint smile.
"You've walked these lands a long time," she said, watching Celenneth read the horizon out of habit.
"Many years. The road teaches you a great deal, if you're willing to pay it mind."
"I can see that." Her gaze went back to the water, and there was something in her face that was beginning, already, to steady.
They made camp at dusk in a quiet glade, and Celenneth coaxed up a small fire, and Linnea sat close to it with her hands around a cup of water, the warmth loosening something in her guard. After a while Celenneth asked it gently. "Where were you bound?"
"East. Toward the Anduin, with my father, to trade." Linnea's eyes stayed on the flames. "He was killed when they came. They took everything." A breath. "He always told me to be strong. I'm trying. It's hard."
"You've carried more than most already." Celenneth turned a stick in the fire. "Strength was never about not feeling the hurt. It's about carrying it and going on anyway."
Linnea looked up, the firelight catching the wet at the edges of her eyes, and managed the smaller smile again. "You make it sound simple."
"It never is," Celenneth said, and meant it, and the two of them fell into a quiet that was not empty but companionable, the fire ticking between them, the night a little less heavy than it had been, the road ahead a little less far.
They set out again the next morning, Linnea before her on Nimroch with her hands loose in his mane for balance, her back still stiff but her fear worn down a little more with every mile. The forest gave way to open rolling hills bright with morning, the air sweet with flowers and turned earth, and by noon they reached a crossroads and a weathered signpost whose faded markings told Celenneth the nearest village lay half a day east.
"Do you think we'll reach it by nightfall?" There was hope in the question.
"If we hold our pace. But stay alert."
She was right to say it. Near a copse she caught movement ahead and slowed Nimroch, a raised hand asking Linnea's silence, and three men came out of the trees to stand across the road — armed with farm-tools, faces hard. "Travellers, is it," the foremost called, more predator than curious. "Dangerous country, this, to be out in without paying a little… protection."
Her hand drifted to her sword. "Step aside."
He sneered and came a pace closer. "That's not the way of it, lass. You pay the toll, or you don't pass."
But she had marked the cloak on the man behind him, and known it, and that changed everything. She sat straighter in the saddle, her voice going quiet and edged. "I know what you are. Remnants of the Redhand Gang — whose leader swung in Bree not a month past. Do you think the rangers wouldn't come down on the rest of you like wolves, if I gave them your names?"1
The three traded uneasy looks; the leader's sneer curdled. "You're bluffing," he muttered, with nothing behind it.
"Am I? Look at me." She let them look. Then she tipped her head toward Linnea. "Let us pass, and I'll not make your business mine."
For a long taut moment it hung there. Then the leader spat in the dust and stepped aside. "Fine. Go on."
She gave him a curt nod and put Nimroch forward, and Linnea clung to the saddle with her eyes fixed back on the men until the road's curve took them from sight.
"That was brave," Linnea said, low and unsteady. "I thought we were finished."
"The road's dangerous. Fear serves you, if you use it — betrays you, if you let it make you a coward." She kept her eyes ahead. "Keep moving."
The rest of the day passed without trouble, though the near thing sat with them both, and by nightfall the village showed as a scatter of warm lamplight ahead, and Linnea's shoulders came down with relief. "We made it," she breathed.
But Celenneth's eyes stayed narrow on those friendly lights. "We'll pass it by," she said.
Linnea turned, thrown. "What? But — there's safety there. A warm bed."
"I don't know that there is." She was already guiding Nimroch off the road into the trees' shadow. "Bandits keep friends in villages often as not — eyes on the road, news traded for coin. I'd not care to be taken in my sleep." She glanced at the woman, and let her voice soften. "I know it's not the comfort you were hoping for. I'll find you safe shelter, I promise it. Only not tonight, and not there."
Linnea nodded, her trust plainly outweighing her disappointment, and they rode on a way past the village to a hollow ringed with dense trees, and Celenneth made the camp — a bedroll laid out, leaves gathered to soften the ground for the woman who had slept on it rough enough already.
The fire had burned low when she saw Linnea shivering. The cold sat deeper in this hollow, and the strain of the road clung to the woman like wet cloth; she lay close to the flames and got little from them. Celenneth watched her a moment, then rose without a word and slipped her own traveling cloak from her shoulders and laid it over her. "Here. This will help."
Linnea's hands closed on the thick worn fabric. "But — you'll be cold."
"I'll manage. You've been through more than enough."
For a while Linnea tried to rest, and could not; the small sounds of the forest kept startling her back from the edge of sleep. At last she shifted nearer, drawing the cloak with her. "It's hard," she admitted, very small. "To feel safe out here."
Celenneth opened her eyes and studied her a moment — the fear still on her, and under it something that wanted only not to be alone with it. Then, without making anything of it, she moved the cloak to cover them both, and let her own steadiness be a thing the woman could lie against. "It's all right," she said. "Rest now."
Linnea did not answer. But after a little while her breathing slowed and evened, and the tension went out of her, and she slept warm against Celenneth's side while the fire fell to embers and the ranger kept her half-waking watch over them both.
Cermië 25, 2965
Linnea woke to gold light through the trees and the world gone still and safe around her, and for a moment she did not move, only lay in the warmth of Celenneth's cloak with its earthy scent about her — the smell of the woman who had kept the dark off her all night — and reached, half-asleep, for a warmth that was no longer there. Her hand found empty air.
She sat up. Celenneth was already awake, perched on a rock at the clearing's edge with Nimroch grazing behind her, her eyes going over the treeline out of a habit that never seemed to rest. And Linnea's heart did a small foolish thing — sank, a little, for no reason she could have defended, except that some part of her had wanted to wake still inside that quiet, with the ranger close.
She folded the cloak with more care than it needed, to have something to do with her hands, and made herself look at the feeling squarely. It was not gratitude. She knew gratitude; she had felt a great deal of it these last days. This was warmer than that, and it had a pull in it, and it frightened her a little for how sudden it was. It's only relief, she told herself. She saved my life. That's all. But she had never been a good liar, least of all to herself, and the memory would not be talked down — the steadiness of Celenneth's voice cutting the fear, the cloak given off her own shoulders without a thought, the plain unhurried kindness of her. It sat in Linnea's chest like a coal, and would not cool.
Celenneth glanced back as she came near. "You're up. We should move soon — the village will be stirring, and I'd rather not be seen."
"Thank you," Linnea said, and heard how much more the two words carried than their size. Celenneth tilted her head a fraction, but did not press her for the rest of it, and Linnea was grateful for that too.
They rode out at a steady pace through hills and thin woodland with the sun warm on their backs, and the dangers that had felt so close now seemed to hold their distance, though the ranger never quite let her guard down. At midday they stopped at a shallow brook, and Linnea crouched to splash the road from her face and comb her fingers through her hair, and said, before she had decided to, "It's strange. I feel safer with you, out here, than I ever did in my own village."
Celenneth, seeing to Nimroch's saddle, glanced over. "Safety isn't a place. It's a peace you carry — in your wits, your strength, and the people you trust."
The people you trust. Linnea turned that over, and nodded, and did not say what it stirred in her. "I think I'm starting to understand that."
The country opened as they went on, far mountains rising blue on the horizon, and once they passed a cluster of abandoned carts weathered grey and broken, and Linnea shivered at the sight — her thoughts going back, unbidden, to a road and her father and men out of the trees — and Celenneth said a low steadying word and they rode on past.
As the light went long and gold Celenneth found them a grove in a narrow valley, its thick canopy good shelter, and knelt to build a small smokeless fire; and Linnea, wrapped in the cloak, watched her hands at the work and decided she was tired of being only the one cared for. "You've done so much for me," she said, standing, brushing at the borrowed tunic. "Let me see to something tonight."
Celenneth looked up, a brow raised. "And what are you planning?"
"You'll see."
She went into the undergrowth with her sleeves pushed up, careful but sure, and came back with dried grasses and leaves and a handful of late berries and nuts, and set to work at the fire, and felt her own confidence grow with every small competent thing her hands remembered how to do. She steeped the leaves in the tin pot until their earthy smell rose with the steam, and laid the berries and nuts on a flat stone, a plain dessert offered with more feeling than it looked.
When the tea was ready she poured it and put a cup in Celenneth's hands, and the ranger tasted it and her mouth curved. "Not bad. Where did you learn this?"
"My father took me foraging when we traveled. Said you should always know how to find what you need, wherever you are." The smile slipped. "I never thought I'd have to lean on it like this."
Celenneth studied her a moment, then lifted her cup. "To your father. He taught you well."
Linnea's eyes stung. "To father," she said, and touched her cup to the ranger's.
The fire burned low as the night came down. Celenneth drew the cloak's edges to cover them both against the chill, and Linnea lay close with her head on her own arm, sleep just out of reach. She watched the ranger keep the watch a while — the sharp eyes moving over the dark, patient, tireless — until at last even Celenneth's lids grew heavy and she let herself drift into a light and restless sleep.
Linnea did not. She lay awake with her heart a tangle she could not name — gratitude, and warmth, and something under them both that had no safe word for it — and the steady rise and fall of Celenneth's breathing beside her was at once the most comforting and the most unsettling thing in the world. She turned her head. Celenneth's face had softened in sleep, the firelight moving over the sharp line of her jaw, the faint furrow that stayed in her brow even at rest, and Linnea felt her chest tighten with an ache she had no business feeling for a woman she had known a handful of days. Her cheeks warmed despite the cold. What am I doing, she thought — and leaned in anyway, slow, tentative.
The kiss was nothing, barely a brush of her lips to Celenneth's cheek. But it set her heart hammering, and she drew back quick and curled small under the cloak and pressed her face into the fabric, praying the ranger had not felt it, would not wake, would not know. Celenneth shifted, murmured something lost, and settled again into the even rhythm of sleep. And Linnea lay a long time after in the dark, full of embarrassment and longing and a small fragile hope she could not yet have said aloud even to herself.
Cermië 26, 2965
Morning came soft and gold through the trees, the air washed with dew, and Celenneth woke first as she always did and eased herself out of the shared cloak without waking the woman curled under it. She went to Nimroch and murmured to him while she checked the saddle and the supplies, her eyes going to the treeline all the while out of an instinct she had long since stopped fighting.
Linnea woke a little later, blinking, drawing the cloak close. "Morning."
"We should eat and move. The roads are quiet now — best not to trust that they'll stay so."
Linnea nodded and helped pack, and Celenneth noticed the odd new shyness in her — the way she would not quite hold her eyes, the careful folding of the cloak, the colour that came and went in her face — and did not know its cause, and did not press it. People carried things. She of all people knew that.
They rode much of the morning in an easy silence, the forest thinning to open fields loud with bees and far birdsong, Linnea leaning into Nimroch's gait with her grip gone loose and trusting. "Do you think we'll reach Radagast soon?" she asked.
"Not yet — not unless he wishes us to find him sooner. And with the danger rising he may keep himself hid. I don't look to meet him before we're near the Anduin."
"More dangerous — why?"
"The Shadow spreads. The nearer the Anduin, the likelier we are to meet its servants — or those running from them."
Near a crossroads they came on a small merchant caravan moving wary along the main road, wagons guarded by a few tired men with spears, and Celenneth slowed and watched from a distance. One guard raised a hand. "Well met! The road ahead's clear — but keep your eyes open. Wolves, two days back." She gave a nod and called her thanks and did not go closer; and when Linnea asked why they had not joined them she said only, "Wrong way. And too many strangers," and Linnea let it go, though Celenneth saw the small longing in her for the comfort of numbers, and understood it, and could not give it to her.
The day held quiet until late, when a single howl came down the wind far off, and Celenneth reined in and listened with her hand going to her bow. "Wolves?" Linnea breathed. "Maybe. Or worse." It did not come again — but she rode watchful after that, and knew Linnea felt the eyes on them too.
As the sun went down she took them off the trail to a glade she would remember a long while: a small waterfall spilling into a clear shallow pool, the rush of it filling the air, the place untouched and almost holy, so that even she felt a rare quiet settle on her as they came into it. Linnea's whole face opened at the sight. "It's beautiful." They made their camp there — the waterfall's noise would mask them, Celenneth noted, though it would mask another's approach as surely, so they would keep the watch — and Linnea gathered wood and cleared a fire-space with a quiet new purpose in her, and by full dark they had a small steady fire throwing its light in ripples off the water.
Linnea sat close to it, watching the fall shimmer in the moonlight. "Hard to believe places like this still are," she said. "So quiet. So untouched."
Celenneth looked up from her whetstone. "Fewer every year. That's the why of the fighting — to keep what's left."
The fire burned down. Linnea drew the cloak tight and let the water's sound ease the day out of her. "Celenneth," she said, soft. "Thank you. For all of it. I don't know where I'd be, but for you."
"You're stronger than you credit, Linnea. You've come this far."
"Maybe. But it's easier with someone like you beside me." The words hung there, and neither of them touched them, and the quiet that held afterward was not empty — only the water, and the fire, and something growing careful between them.
Morning broke soft over the glade, the waterfall louder in the early stillness. Celenneth was up first, seeing to Nimroch and the camp, and Linnea rose after and stood by the pool a while looking at the water with a small wistful longing. "It's too beautiful not to," she murmured.
"What?"
Linnea turned, shy. "The water. We've been days on the road. I thought…" She gestured at the fall.
"It's a good chance to wash. Go on."
Linnea hesitated, then slipped out of the borrowed cloak and tunic and the rest, folding them careful, and waded into the shallows with a soft sigh as the cool took her, and let down her hair and made a small frustrated sound at the state of it. Celenneth stayed by the fire — and then found herself watching the younger woman fight a losing battle with the tangles, her fingers snagging and pulling, her frown deepening, and something in it reached past the ranger's habitual reserve.
"Here." She toed off her boots and rolled her sleeves and waded in far enough to reach her. "Let me."
Linnea blinked round at her. "You don't have to—"
"I don't mind. Sit, and I'll make short work of it."
Linnea moved to a smooth rock at the pool's edge and, after a breath, let her. Celenneth stood behind her and gathered the wet strands and worked the knots loose with a care her hands remembered better than she did — and the remembering came with it, the way it does, unasked.
"You're good at this," Linnea said, wonder in it.
"I had a younger sister, once." The words were out before she had decided to give them. "She got her hair in a worse state than yours, every day of her life."
Linnea half-turned. "A sister. What became of her?"
Celenneth's hands paused, and went on. "She's gone. A long time ago now." Level, even — but Linnea heard the weight under it, because Linnea knew that particular weight.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to—"
"It's all right." Gentle. "We all carry losses. It's the going-on that counts." And she finished the combing in a quiet that was not uncomfortable, Linnea's eyes closed, leaning a little into her hands; and Celenneth found — to her own faint surprise — that the steady small work of caring for someone was its own kind of ease, one she had not let herself have in longer than she wanted to reckon.
"There," she said, stepping back, shaking the water from her hands. "That'll hold a while."
Linnea turned with a soft smile. "Thank you. Not only for this, but…" Her voice trailed off.
"Finish quick. We should be on the road." And Celenneth turned away to the horse before whatever was in the woman's face could ask anything more of her — not because she did not feel the pull of it, but because she did, and had learned long ago what it cost to want a thing the road would not let her keep.
Cermië 28, 2965
The sun came up bright, throwing long shadows down the forest path, and the howl of two nights past rode with them still, a small cold reminder at the back of the mind. Nimroch went steady, his ears working back and forth as though he heard what they could not, and the morning passed without event — but the deeper into the wood they went, the heavier the air seemed to hang, until an uneasy stillness lay over everything.
Past noon she found the first sign: a fresh paw-print pressed deep in the soft earth by the trail. She swung down and crouched over it, and the size and depth of it put a chill in her. "Wolves," she said, rising fast. "Close."
Linnea's voice wavered. "What do we do?"
"Stay by me. If they come, Nimroch will hold — but we may have to fight our way clear."
They did not wait long. A low growl rolled through the trees, and five wolves came out of the shadows, eyes bright with hunger, spreading in a coordinated arc to take the pair between them. Celenneth had her bow up and drawn before the arc could close. She breathed out and loosed, and the shaft took the nearest through the flank with a wet thud; it yelped and fell back, and its pack-mates snarled and checked at the smell of its blood. "They're wary," she said, nocking again. "But they won't quit." Her second arrow put another down deeper in the pack, and while they snapped and milled around their wounded she made the only right call — not to stand and be surrounded, but to run.1
"Now!" She put her heels to Nimroch, and the horse threw himself into a gallop, hooves hammering the forest floor, and the wolves broke into the chase behind. But no wolf of the wild could hold Nimroch's pace over open ground; she lay low along his neck with Linnea clinging hard at her back, and the pack strung out and fell away, the wounded first and then the rest, their snarls thinning into the trees until there was only the wind and the drumming of hooves. She did not slow until the last of them was gone from hearing, and then she drew rein, and the horse snorted and tossed his head but stood easy.
Linnea slid down on trembling legs. "That was — close. Too close."
"We're clear now." Celenneth's face softened a fraction. "You held on well."
They rode on, Nimroch tireless under them, the forest opening into meadows gold with the falling sun, and neither spoke of the wolves, only fixed their eyes on the miles. At dusk she found a sheltered grove by a murmuring stream, and Linnea gathered the kindling with small new efficiencies that Celenneth marked with quiet approval and did not remark on, and by the time the fire caught, some ease had come back into the camp.
After they had eaten she spread her map on a flat stone and traced their line. "Good ground covered. Hold this pace and we're within Radagast's reach in three days — four, if the weather turns."
Linnea leaned to follow her finger. "Do you think we'll meet more trouble?"
"Almost surely. The Shadow reaches far. But careful, and we can slip most of it."
"You seem sure of everything." Linnea's gaze came up. "How do you stay so steady?"
The ghost of a smile. "Years of it. And knowing that doubt slows the hand."
Linnea took that in, the firelight in her eyes. "I'm glad I'm not making this road alone," she said, soft.
The fire burned low, and Celenneth sat by it working her whetstone slow along the blade, Nimroch grazing near, the stream and his soft snorts the only sound. Linnea sat beside her, their talk faded into an easy quiet — and then exhaustion took the younger woman all at once; her head nodded, and before Celenneth could say a word she had leaned into her side and, with a small sigh, settled her head into Celenneth's lap.
Celenneth went still, the sword forgotten in her hands. Linnea's breathing had already gone deep and even, her dark hair spilling across Celenneth's knees, her face — turned up, firelit — gone soft and unguarded and trusting in a way that reached straight past every wall the ranger had spent years building.
Her first instinct was to move her, gently, to put the proper distance back between them. She did not. She sat and looked at the small turn of that sleeping mouth, the plain trust of it, and felt the warmth stir in her chest that she never let herself feel, and hated a little how much she wanted to let it.
Her hand rose toward the dark hair and stopped, and closed into a fist, and drew back. Her mind went to Bree — to Orlen, and the letter she had sent north with her heart half-open in it, and no answer come or likely to come for weeks or more. She had been a fool to wait as long as she had; but she had never once said what she felt, and he had never presumed, and what right had she to expect him to have waited on a hope she had never given him? And even were he waiting — it might be a year before the road carried her back to know it.
And Linnea. She was lovely, and there was something in the soft warmth of her against her side that put heat in Celenneth's face — but the woman was grieving, and far from home, and Celenneth was only the one who had happened to be there when the dark came for her. To make anything of that would be a kind of theft.
And past all of it, the plain shape of the thing: when they reached Radagast, Linnea would stay, safe in the wizard's keeping, and Celenneth would go on alone, because that was what she was — a wanderer bound to the road and the solitude it asked of her, no fit place for anyone to set their heart. Desire is a distraction, she told herself, jaw tightening, an old hard catechism. Attachments only make the road heavier.
Linnea shifted and murmured something lost and settled again, and Celenneth's resolve wavered and held, barely, and she kept the watch long into the night with her eyes on the dark and her heart at war with itself. And as the fire fell to embers she let herself, at the last, one small and fleeting smile — because this at least was hers, this quiet weight and warmth in her lap under the stars, even if it could never be a thing that lasted, even if it could never be more than this.
Cermië 29, 2965
Morning came clear and crisp, and Linnea woke slow and reluctant, and lay a moment watching Celenneth already up and seeing to Nimroch — the calm deliberate way she moved, that put a flutter under Linnea's ribs she could no longer pretend was anything but what it was. This had gone past gratitude days ago. Past admiration. It was the other thing, the one with no safe name, and she could not keep it locked down much longer without it breaking something.
She folded the shared cloak and made her decision as she did it. Tonight, she thought. I'll tell her tonight. Her hands were not quite steady on the fabric.
"Linnea." The ranger's even voice. "Ready?"
She startled, dropped a corner of the cloak. "Yes — yes. Ready." Her face went hot.
Celenneth's sharp gaze held on her a beat, then turned back to the horse. "Then let's not waste the daylight."
She rode behind Celenneth through the morning with her arms loose at the ranger's waist and her mind anywhere but the road, rehearsing and discarding a hundred openings. Celenneth, I need to tell you — no, too much like an ambush. I care about you more than I meant to — is that too far? She watched the sure line of Celenneth's shoulders and thought, helplessly, how could someone like her ever feel the same of me? — and could not make herself stop imagining that she might.
Celenneth was her steady self, eyes on the horizon, hand near her sword, and seemed to feel nothing of the storm at her back — though once she glanced round. "Comfortable?"
"Yes," Linnea said, too fast, and the ranger raised a brow and let it go, and that easy unreadability was half of what drew Linnea in and half of what was slowly driving her mad.
By the time they made camp her heart was going like a hare's. She gathered firewood to keep her hands busy while Celenneth saw to Nimroch and the supplies; they ate in a silence that felt different tonight, weighted. And when at last Celenneth put away the arrows she had been fletching and leaned back into the firelight, her sharp face gone serene and far away, Linnea took her breath and her chance together.
"Celenneth." Her voice came out shaky and she pressed on through it. "Can I talk to you? About something."
Celenneth turned to her, neutral, attentive. "Of course. What is it?"
And now that the moment was here every careful word deserted her. She looked at her twisting hands, and made herself look up. "I've been thinking. About everything you've done for me. And about — us. About how I feel." A crackle of fire in the silence. "I care about you, Celenneth. More than I ever thought I could care for anyone. I needed you to know it."
For a long moment Celenneth said nothing, her eyes steady on Linnea's face, and Linnea felt her heart begin to sink into the quiet.
"Linnea." Calm, but careful. "You've been through so much. It's a natural thing, to feel — attachment — for the one who helped you through it. But this road, this life. It's no place for feelings like that." She looked away to the fire.
"It's not gratitude." Linnea heard the hurt in her own voice and did not hide it. "It's deeper than that."
Celenneth shut her eyes a moment, as if to steady herself, and when she opened them there was something in her face Linnea had not seen before — the guard down, and under it a plain vulnerability. "I know," she said, low. "That's why it's so hard." She leaned forward, hands clasped tight. "I've spent my whole life on this road. I keep my distance because I've learned what comes when I don't. Loss. And I don't—" her voice caught, the first time Linnea had ever heard it falter — "I don't know that I can bear it again."
Linnea's breath snagged. "Then you feel it too."
Celenneth looked at her hands. "I don't want to," she said, barely audible. "But yes."
The word landed and stayed. Then Celenneth glanced up, open in a way that cost her visibly. "There's a man in Bree. Someone I thought — hoped. I wrote to him before I left, confessed something of what I felt, in a way. I've regretted it since; it wasn't fair of me, to put that on him and ride away." She shook her head. "And you — when we reach Radagast, your road with me ends. You'll be safe, out of this wandering life. That's how it has to be."
Linnea leaned in, her hand hovering near Celenneth's, not quite touching. "Why must it?" Her voice trembled. "What if we—"
"No." Sharp — then softening at once. "Linnea. I care for you more than I ought. That's the truth of it. But caring for you means letting you go, so you can have a life that isn't all danger and loss."
Linnea lowered her head, and did not press, and let the fire dance between them a while. When she raised it again her eyes were wet but her voice was level and sure. "I understand why you feel it. I know what the road has taken from you." A breath. "But we're here now, Celenneth. And neither of us knows what tomorrow brings." She leaned closer, trembling but certain. "So let's have what we have — even if it's only a few days. Even if it's only this. I'd sooner regret the having than the not."
Celenneth's guard cracked the rest of the way; Linnea watched it go. "Linnea, I—" And the ranger's voice failed her.
Linnea did not wait for the end of it. She moved closer, slow, deliberate, giving every chance to be turned away — and Celenneth did not turn away. Linnea lifted a hand to her cheek. "Please," she whispered. "Just this once."
And the world went quiet — fire, leaves, the far call of a night-bird all falling back — as she leaned in and put her arms around the ranger. Celenneth went stiff, and then let out a slow breath, and the tension ran out of her; and slowly, as if she had forgotten how, her arms came up and closed around Linnea in return, and she turned her face into Linnea's shoulder and held on like something she was afraid to lose, and all the vulnerability she had spent a lifetime hiding came quietly out of her at last. They stayed so a long time in the dark.
When Celenneth drew back it was only to rest her brow against Linnea's. "I don't know how to do this," she said, so soft it was almost nothing.
Linnea smiled, her hands still on the ranger's shoulders. "We don't have to know it all tonight. Let's just be here. Together."
Celenneth nodded, slow, all her defences finally down, and for this one moment let go of the road and the past and the uncertain way ahead — and in Linnea's arms found a fragile, unlooked-for peace.
Linnea held it a while longer, not ready to let it slip. Then she leaned back, hands light on Celenneth's shoulders, and searched the ranger's firelit face for any sign of retreat — and found none, only a quiet acceptance, wary still, but no longer denial. "Goodnight, Celenneth," she whispered, and before her courage could fail her, she leaned in and kissed her.
It was gentle, almost tentative, and it carried everything she had been holding back. Celenneth froze the briefest instant — and then let herself sink into it, her mouth answering soft, and the world fell all the way away, and there was only the small crackle of the fire and the warmth the two of them made. Linnea deepened it, her fingers finding Celenneth's hair, and felt the ranger's heart going hard against her; and when at last she drew back her cheeks were flushed and her own heart racing and her eyes bright with something between joy and gratitude. Celenneth breathed out slow, her face unreadable and her gaze steady on Linnea's.
Without a word, Linnea drew the cloak over them both and settled into Celenneth's side against the deepening cold. The fire fell to embers; the forest went still. For tonight, at least, they had this — a fragile, undeniable thing, held between them in the wide and uncertain dark.
Cermië 30, 2965
Dawn came gold and green through the grove, the fire down to a thread of smoke, and Celenneth woke at the first birdcall as she always did — but this morning something was different, and she knew it before she was fully awake.
Linnea was still curled against her side under the shared cloak, breathing soft and even, her face at peace. Celenneth lay and looked at her, and the night came back whole — the kiss, the warmth of her, the things they had said — and her chest drew tight around a tangle she had not felt in years: an ache of wanting, a thread of guilt, and under them both a small, frightening, fragile hope. Careful not to wake her, she eased up and tucked the cloak back around the sleeping woman and went to see to Nimroch, her hands steady though her mind was anything but. This was not the plan, she thought, and did not know whether she meant it as reproach or wonder.
Linnea woke to find her crouched at the fire-pit coaxing the embers back, and watched her a moment before she spoke. "Good morning."
"Morning." Celenneth glanced over, calm. "You slept well, I hope."
"Better than I have in a long while." A pause; her eyes searched the ranger's face. "And you?"
"Well enough."
Linnea worried her lip, uncertain how to cross the distance between the closeness of the dark and the daylight quiet. "About last night—"
"You've nothing to be sorry for, if that's your worry."
"No — I wasn't going to be. I only don't want you feeling I'm asking for something you can't give."
Celenneth turned fully to her, and let the guard down enough for it to show. "Linnea. What happened last night — I don't regret it. But this road is unforgiving. It asks more than most people can carry."
Linnea came closer, her voice firm under the nerves. "I know it's not easy. I know you have your doubts. But whatever we're given — days or years — I want to spend it with you."
Celenneth breathed out slow, her jaw working, and at last she nodded, taut. "Then one step at a time. The road ahead will tell us what we need to know."
They broke camp in a silence that was not awkward, and if Celenneth moved with her usual economy, her glances toward Linnea carried a warmth that had not been in them before.
The day was kind, unexpectedly — the weather held clear, the forest paths ran open and almost welcoming, no shadow on any of them, and the two of them rode easy and grew more attuned to each other with every mile, the fear of the past days loosening its grip. Nimroch went sure over the broken ground, and even the far birdcalls and the wind in the leaves seemed peaceable rather than a warning. It was, Celenneth thought, the first day in a long time she had not spent braced for the next blow. She should have known better than to trust it.
The night was calm, the stars out bright, and she lay under the shared cloak and let sleep take her deep. But the peace did not follow her down into it.
She stood alone in a grey drowned country under no sky at all, the ground sucking cold at her boots, everywhere the reek of standing water and rot. Her sword was in her hand but it weighed like an anchor, and her strength was draining out of her arm the way blood drains from a wound. A shape came toward her out of the murk — and it was Linnea. But Linnea gone grey and still, her lips blue, her eyes wide and lifeless, and she reached out one trembling hand and said, in a small voice from very far away, Why didn't you save me? Celenneth tried to answer and could not; the ground gave way beneath her and she was falling, and Linnea's dead face receded up and away into the dark, the terror frozen on it, and a shadow blacker than the fall closed over her and swallowed the last of the light.1
She woke with a jolt, drenched and rigid, her breath coming in ragged pulls and her hand already on her sword. The dying fire, the quiet camp, Linnea safe an arm's length away — she took it in and knew herself awake, but the dread of the thing clung to her like wet cloth and would not shake loose.
"Celenneth?" Linnea's voice out of the dark; she was sitting up, eyes wide. "What is it? What happened?"
"It's — nothing." Her own voice came out rough. "A dream."
Linnea frowned, not fooled. "That wasn't nothing. You're shaking." She scooted near and set a tentative hand on Celenneth's arm. "You don't have to carry it alone. Whatever it was — I'm here."
Every old instinct told Celenneth to wave her off, to step back behind the walls that had kept her whole this long. But the warmth of that hand, and the plain sincerity in the voice, got past them. She let out a shaking breath and dropped her eyes.
"It was you," she admitted, barely a whisper. "I dreamed I lost you. That I couldn't save you."
Linnea's face softened, and she pressed Celenneth's arm. "You won't lose me. We've come this far together, and I'd trust you with my life."
Celenneth looked at her, the vulnerability stark in her eyes against all her usual stone. "I've lost people. Too many. And the thought of losing you—"
"You won't." Fierce and steady, young and certain. "I won't allow it." And she shifted close and put her arms around the ranger, protective, holding her together. "Whatever's ahead, we face it together. But for now — you're safe. We're both safe."
Celenneth hesitated, and then let herself lean into the embrace and take what comfort was in it — the younger woman's warmth, her plain unshaken presence — and the fear of the dream did not leave her, but it grew quieter, less able to fill the whole of the dark. She closed her eyes, and her breathing came back to even, and sleep took her again — not wholly at peace, but no longer hunted. For tonight, at least, the darkness was held off; and she was not, for the first time in longer than she could remember, holding it off alone.
Cermië 30, 2965
The morning came up cool and green, dew and pine on the air, and Celenneth rode quiet in it. The nightmare had not quite let go of her — it never did, not by daylight — and Linnea, who had learned to read her, kept close and said little, and let the quiet be company enough.
Nimroch carried them on at an easy pace, his silver-grey coat catching the light. The road had eased; the marks of shadow that had dogged them for weeks thinned as they went, as though the land itself were letting out a held breath.
They stopped at noon to water him at a stream, and Linnea gathered wildflowers while Celenneth bent over the map. "Two days," she said. "If we hold this pace, we reach Radagast's country in two."
"Good." Linnea looked up, a flower turning in her fingers. "I hope he's as kind as you say."
"He's strange. But his heart is good. He'll look after you."
"I hope," Linnea said, not quite lightly, "we can all look after each other." Something passed between them that Celenneth chose not to name. She folded the map and said they should move.
By afternoon the forest had changed around them — the trees older, vast, their roots written across the ground in patterns that looked almost deliberate. The air grew dense, though not heavy; alive, rather, and aware, as if the wood had noticed them and not minded.
"His domain," Celenneth said, her hand drifting to her sword out of habit more than fear. "You can feel where it begins."
"It feels safe," Linnea said after a moment. "And strange."
"That's the two of them together. His magic doesn't keep to one place."
They made camp at dusk in a hollow beneath the roots of an ancient tree, the moss soft underfoot, the air carrying a low hum that might have been the forest and might have been sleep coming on. Linnea built the fire — sure of it now, after so many nights — and Celenneth watched her a moment before she turned to see to Nimroch, and did not let herself name that either.
After they had eaten, she sat by the fire with her sword across her knees and her mind anywhere but the blade. Linnea sat near, knees drawn up, watching the flames — and then, into a long quiet, said her name.
"Celenneth."
She looked up.
Linnea crossed the little distance between them and knelt, one hand light on Celenneth's arm. "I want you to know what this is to me. What you are to me."
"Linnea—" It came out low, already half a surrender. "You don't have to—"
"I do. I need to say it, and I need you to hear it."
Neither of them moved. Then Celenneth lifted her hand to Linnea's cheek and felt that her own fingers were not quite steady. "I've tried to keep my distance from you," she said. "It hasn't worked. You matter to me — more than I meant to let anyone."
Linnea leaned into her palm. "Then stop fighting it."
Celenneth searched her face a moment longer, for what she was not sure — permission, or courage — and found both. She closed the last of the distance. Their foreheads touched, and then their mouths, slow and unhurried, and the fire and the forest and the long road all thinned to nothing around it.
When they broke apart Linnea laughed, low and nervous, and rose, and stood before her in the firelight. "I've never undressed for anyone," she said, and began to, unlacing, letting the road-worn layers fall away one by one until there was only her and the light moving on her skin. She knelt again, closer now, the fire warm at her back. "I've never done any of this."
Celenneth took her by the nape and drew her in and kissed her deep. "It can be a good thing," she said against her mouth, and stood. "I feel overdressed."
"Let me." Linnea's fingers went to the laces of her tunic and trembled there, and her eyes came up with the question already in them. Celenneth gave the smallest nod, and Linnea began, slowly, to undo her.
She held still for it. She had spent years making herself hard against exactly this — against being seen, against wanting to be — and now she stood in the low light and let a woman's unsteady hands open her collar, and felt the old armour she could not take off with the tunic begin, at last, to give. The shirt beneath went with it, over her head, and she shook her hair loose as the night air found her skin.
"You're beautiful," Linnea breathed, and stepped in, and this time there was nothing between them, her breasts against Celenneth's, the shock of warm skin on warm skin.
Celenneth caught the small of her back and kept the kiss, her free hand tracing up the outside of Linnea's thigh. Linnea's knees went; the ready arm held her. "There'll be time to fall," Celenneth murmured. "Not yet."
Linnea steadied, and let her hands learn her — the plane of her stomach, the muscle of her back, the ridges of old scars, each one a place a story had happened. Celenneth's breath caught under the exploring touch, and Linnea drew back to look at her, serious now. "You don't always have to be the strong one," she said, barely above the fire. "Not with me." It undid something the kissing had not reached. Celenneth nodded, and let her mouth curve, almost shy.
They sank to the moss together and let the cloak take them. Celenneth laid Linnea back and set her mouth to the hollow of her throat, and lower, learning where breath sharpened and where it broke, taking her time because time, for once, was theirs. Linnea's hands fisted in her hair; her hips rose to meet a touch that Celenneth kept slow and sure until slow was no longer bearable, and then she gave her what she asked for and felt her come apart under her hands and her mouth, a long unravelling that ended with Celenneth's name spilled half-broken into the dark.
And then Linnea, breathless, brave, wanted her turn — clumsy at first and unafraid of being clumsy, watching Celenneth's face for every answer, learning her by the sounds she drew out of a woman who had taught herself for years to make none. In the end Celenneth gave those up too, arched under her, and let herself be known.
The fire had burned to embers when they lay still beneath the shared cloak, tangled and warm, the weight of the road lifted off them for one whole night. Linnea's head rested on her shoulder; her fingers drew lazy, aimless lines along Celenneth's arm.
"I didn't know I could feel like that," Linnea said.
"You'd truly never—?"
"Never got curious enough, I suppose." She propped herself up, wicked and soft at once. "I liked getting curious about you, though. You're quieter on the road than you are with your clothes off."
Celenneth felt the heat climb her face, and let it, and then the smile went out of her by degrees. "I don't know what tomorrow brings," she said, so low it barely carried.
Linnea found her hand under the cloak and held it. "Then let's have tonight," she said. "Let's have now."
And for that night, in the hum of Radagast's waking wood, it was enough.
Úrimë 1, 2965
They broke camp early, moving now in the easy rhythm the road and the night before had made between them — the thing that had changed passing in glances and small unguarded smiles, unspoken and understood. Nimroch went steady down the narrow forest way, his pale coat catching the dappled light, and Celenneth rode quiet with her eyes on the wood ahead and her hand resting light over Linnea's where it held the saddle.
The forest changed around them as they went, and both of them felt it. The trees seemed almost to hum; their roots ran in patterns too deliberate for chance; the very air carried a green, earthy weight, a sense of being noticed. This was someone's country, and it was awake.
They had just crested a low rise when the underbrush rustled and Nimroch shied and stopped, and Celenneth's hand was on her sword before she had thought — but the figure that stepped out of the shadows was no enemy. A man in brown robes that seemed woven of the wood itself, his hair and beard grey and brown and wild, his eyes bright and kind and older than kindness.
"Radagast," she said, surprise and relief both in it, and took her hand from the hilt.
The wizard's gaze moved between the two of them and warmed, though there was urgency under it. "Well met, Celenneth. I have been expecting you."
"You have?" Linnea managed.
"Indeed. And your coming is well-timed — I bear grave news, and a charge that will not wait." He led them to a nearby clearing where an old gnarled tree let its low branches down like a roof, and there Celenneth drew out the silver-bound book and gave it into his hands.
His eyes went wide as he took it. "The writings of Alatar," he breathed, turning it with something near reverence. "I have not had word of the Blue Wizard in long years. This is no common book, Celenneth — lore he gathered himself in the deeps of time, much of it forgotten now by even the wise. Secrets of the world's nature; spells to mend and to ward; and, it may be, ways to see the Shadow's working before it strikes." He looked up, keen. "Elrond trusted you a great deal, to set this in your hands." He held it to his chest. "I will study it. There may be answers here for the wars still to come. You have done a service — not to me alone, but to all who stand against the dark."
Then he sat, and the warmth went out of his face and something graver came into it. "The Shadow spreads faster than I feared, Celenneth. Things are moving in the East, and even the south is no longer safe." His eyes seemed to go past her, past the clearing, past the day itself. "I have seen it — a great plain under a pall of shadow, and on it the peoples of the world drawn up together, their banners torn by a wind out of the dark; and a beast rising far off with eyes like coals; and a moment coming, one single moment, when all of them must stand as one — one heart, one sword — or be drowned under a black tide." He came back to her. "That day is not yet. But it is coming, and the road to it begins now."1
Her jaw set; her hand found her sword-hilt of its own accord. "What would you have me do?"
"Carry the warning to the leaders of the Free Peoples. It will be no easy road. But their resolve must be woken now, while there is still time to wake it."2
His gaze moved to Linnea, and softened. "And you, Linnea. I have seen your path as well."
Linnea's hand tightened on her cloak. "Me?"
"You. Though you may not know it yet, you have a part to play in what comes. You are no mere traveller. Your heart and your courage will both be tried — and it is no accident that you walk this road at Celenneth's side."
Linnea looked to Celenneth, uncertain. "What does that mean?"
The wizard smiled, but the sadness did not leave his eyes. "That your fates are bound together, though not perhaps in the way either of you would guess. You are to stand together against a great peril. But be warned — this bond of yours will be your strength and your trial both."
Something in Celenneth went cold and hard at that. "Radagast. If Linnea is in danger, I will keep her safe. Whatever it costs."
"I do not doubt your resolve." Grave now. "But strength is not always the answer. A time will come when you must choose between your duty and your heart. Remember that it came to you as a warning — and not too late."
The clearing went quiet, the words settling over the two of them like a weight. Linnea reached and brushed her hand to Celenneth's arm. "Whatever comes," she said, low and steady under the fear, "we face it together."
Celenneth looked at her, and the hard thing in her eased, a little. "Together," she agreed — though the unease did not leave her chest.
Radagast rose and brushed down his robes. "The time for talk is past. I have other matters, and you have your road before you."
Linnea stood quickly. "Wait — you're only leaving? What if we have more to ask?"
He turned, a faint smile for her. "Questions find their answers on the road, young one. Trust your wits — and each other." He looked once more to Celenneth, serious again. "Remember what I told you. The choices you make will shape more than your own fate." And with that he walked into the trees, his brown robes melting into them, and within a few steps he was simply gone, and there was only the hum of the waking wood and the weight of everything he had said.
Neither of them spoke for a while. Celenneth stared after him, unreadable; Linnea worried at the edge of her cloak.
"He didn't give us much to go on," Linnea said at last.
"The Istari rarely do." Celenneth crossed her arms. "His kind would sooner nudge you toward the road than name it."
"So what now? A message to the Free Peoples, he says — but not how, or where."
Celenneth's eyes went to the horizon, already working it. "We start at the nearest stronghold. If the Shadow moves as fast as he says, we'll want allies, and news. From there we choose our next step."
Linnea nodded, still uncertain. "And what he said. About me. About — us."
Celenneth hesitated, then turned to her, and let her eyes soften. "I think Radagast sees paths, not certainties. Whatever part you're meant to play, it's yours to take up — or not."
"It's not the most comforting thing," Linnea said, mouth thin, "knowing there's a prophecy hung over me."
"Prophecies rarely are." Wry — and then gentler. "But you don't have to carry it alone." And she put out her hand, and Linnea took it, and they stood a moment together in the wizard's waking wood with the whole shadowed road of the years still unwalked before them; and then they went to Nimroch, and mounted, and turned him toward the first of it.