This chapter comes right after the events of the previous one, and takes place in the same AU for Under Strange Stars.

In this earlier version, Glorfindel and Elrohir didn't meet until the final battle scene at the end of USS. Glorfindel came to Harad with a company of Elves, including Ardil. At the time I was entertaining the idea of a Gondorian invasion as a backdrop for the story, which is why their King Cemendur gets a mention.

Pain washes over him, pain like licking flame. He must move, must get away or be burned. He screams, writhing and kicking in a losing battle against the hands holding down his arms and shoulders and legs, cradling his head. If this is torture it is pointless. No one is asking him any questions, and if they would do so he could not recall as much as his own name beneath this onslaught of agony.

Many voices speak in urgency. They ring clear and bright as bells, but the words flutter away like windblown leaves and he cannot grasp them.

A shadow moves above him and he strains to see who. For an instant he is sure he knows this man. A half-remembered face leaps from the depths of memory, the ghost of someone doubtlessly long dead. He must escape this place of phantoms and agony or he will die, too. He thrashes and flails but the hands are all over him and they are strong as steel.

Lips are lowered to his ear, a warm puff of breath. A whisper cuts through the terror of confusion. The voice is rich and wholesome as the rustling of golden wheat. "Still. Be still. Sleep."

A warm hand cups his face, gently as if it is a breakable thing, and in a heartbeat the pain is whisked away as if it never was. Only that voice remains, now singing a soporific litany of stillness and calm. The light beyond his eyelids stings too harshly, and he has no wish to be present for whatever is being done to his ribcage, so there seems no harm in doing as he is told.

The pain is bright and brilliant, a hot brand thrust between his ribs at every breath. His mind flutters like a startled bird. Someone moans, and with a dizzying jolt he recognizes his own voice. He must sit up and see where he has been taken, but something is wrong with his eyes and they will not open.

Waking brings a visceral, scorching thirst, the all-consuming need to wet his sticky, blood-filled mouth. Neither his eyes nor his hands will obey him, but his voice does and he rasps his plea into the smothering darkness like a prayer, an obsession.

"Water."

The cup comes to his lips in a heartbeat, and he would have sobbed from sheer relief if simple breathing were not such a torment. Cool water fills his parched mouth. It tastes of honey and salt and a slight edge of some bitter herb. He has never drunk anything so wondrous. The cup disappears far too soon and he moans in protest at the loss.

The golden voice is gentle but determined. "Sleep a little more," it murmurs from somewhere beside his head. A hand comes to rest against his cheek, and consciousness flits from his grasp.

Glorfindel sets down the cup, but he remains standing over Elrohir's still form, watching the pained grimace smooth down into shockingly familiar traits as poppy and exhaustion pull him under once more.

Ardil cannot help but pity his captain. Glorfindel's air of knife-edged tension starkly contrasts his gentleness when he pulls up the coverlets and tucks them around the boy's shoulders against the cold desert night. A small hesitation, and then he strokes a pitifully short lock back from the pale face. The small intimacy would be thoroughly impossible with Elrohir awake, and Glorfindel knows it. Elrohir scrabbling backwards with drawn blade and terror in his eyes, screaming at the mere sight of the man who should have been a second father to him had been an exquisite agony.

"He will live. Can we not overcome all else?" Ardil asks in an attempt at comfort.

"We must get him home," sighs Glorfindel after a long silence. "I cannot see how he would come willingly. He will heal, and once he is hale he will fight us. I know not if I have the stomach to drag him from here to Imladris bound like a prisoner. He would hate me forever, after that."

"You will convince him." Ardil answers promptly, though he cannot imagine how.

His eyes will not open. Something holds down his eyelids and he is caught in the dark with his hands tied. Terror washes over him at the thought of Umbar and chains and manacles. He turns and writhes as he battles the invisible restraints. Pain flares in his chest.

Something cool and fragrant touches his face, a wet cloth scented with some sweet herb. Whoever holds it carefully wipes one eye, then the other so he can blink apart the grainy silt of tears that has sealed them. Crusts come away and now he can blink into the light. The world leaps at him, bright and blinding, then settles down to the coloured inside of a tent. A soft half-light filters through walls and roof of carmine and saffron canvas.

"You are not tied down," says a gentle voice. Blankets are pulled back, a stream of cool air against his body. Who has piled him in these layers of wool and linen?

"See? Lift your hands," the voice suggests in strangely accented Númenórean.

He barely can, with his battered muscles shaking like a leaf in a storm. Then the voice's owner moves into his line of sight from somewhere beside his head, and he nearly rolls off the bed in terror. The white-fiend has shed its golden armour, but it still carries a dagger at its hip. Alien eyes are trained on him with a gleam like starlight reflecting off a blade.

He scrabbles away, but something tender is tearing between his ribs and the pain is breathtaking. He can only pull up his legs to hide behind his own knees for want of any other shelter from the fell creature.

"You have nothing to fear." The white-fiend's eyes remain bright, almost luminous in the half-dark space, but they now hold something much like sorrow. When it reaches for him the pale, slender hands are gentle. "Please, will you not lie down? Do not hurt yourself."

For all his efforts he has moved but a small ways towards the edge of the bed, and the Elf effortlessly scoops him up with a grip both tender and strong as steel, and eases him back against the pillows. "My name is Glorfindel," it says softly. "I know yours, and I mean you well. I hope we may become friends."

This is so astonishingly absurd that he cannot help his wide-eyed stare of incredulity, half-convinced that this will prove some novel interrogation technique and the Umbarians are behind it after all. "You are an Elf!" he croaks back in answer.

The white-fiend seems unfazed by the accusation. "That I am."

A shudder runs down his back at hearing the words spoken aloud. "What have you done to me?"

The Elf draws a deep breath, as if the tale is a pain. "We rushed you off the battlefield, drained a quart of blood from your chest and set eight broken ribs."

This does little but add to this alarming riddle. "Why?!"

The Elf casts him a look that seems very near terror. "Because I want you to live. I very nearly came too late." Another deep, struggling breath. "You have been lying here, tossed between life and death for three days and nights. I am … beyond relieved to see you awake. It was a near thing."

He does not dare ask why him instead of any other, lest he provoke the agitated creature into a fit of rage. Instead he looks about, at the lavish tent and the bed of richly carved cedar wood. A white tree leaps out from amidst the geometric inlays.

"Where is here?"

"We are in the encampment of Gondor, as King Cemendur's guests," comes the matter-of-fact answer.

This leaves him to wonder why the King of Gondor would suffer these white-fiends walking among his army. Another thought arrives on that one's heels, about houseless spirits and possession and other unspeakable horrors, and he can feel himself blanch. "Gondor and Harad are allies. Why would you take a Haradi prisoner?"

The Elf shakes its head. "You are no prisoner. Please, do not be afraid. I mean you nothing but good."

"Then why did you take me?" he dares to ask.

"Because you would have died otherwise," answers the creature, before decisively changing the subject. "Are you hungry?"

A memory strikes him, quick and terrible as lightning, of fireside songs and stories. White-fiends desire captives, and to accept as much as a sip of water from their hands will ensnare a man in a net spun of sorcery. He lowers his eyes to the blanket of fine Gondorian wool covering his legs, and shakes his head as he rest of him trembles with fear.

The Elf keeps its gentle temper. A smile lights up the fair face like cloudbreak. "You need some sustenance. We have broth. Upon my honour it is nothing more than that."

No tale he ever heard mentions whether white-fiends would possess a sense of honour. He is still considering that question when the Elf turns to the the door flap to accept a steaming cup from someone standing by out of sight. The hearty smell of cooked chicken wafting from it seems at once too mundane and too wholesome for preternatural trickery, and his own stomach betrays him with a growl. The sound brings a smile to the Elf's high-cheeked face.

Lifting the cup to his mouth is near impossible, with his shaking hands barely obeying his will. He is painfully aware that his own well-worn undershirt has been replaced with one of fine linen bearing intricate, alien whorls of embroidered leaves and stars, many hours of skillful work. Spilling soup over it could be more than his life is worth. The Elf watches him struggle for an instant, but soon one white hand lifts the cup from his hand. The other one rises to rest against the base of his neck and push him up to sitting. He cannot help but shudder at the touch. He had imagined the creature's white skin cool and moist like a grub, or fish scales perhaps. Instead it proves warm and deceptively human.

When the empty cup is finally set aside he shakes with exhaustion. His own weakness drives home that this Elf could mistreat him however it wished, and yet for some unfathomable reason did not. Between that slight safety and the leaden weight of weariness, sleep takes him once more.

Why was this road not taken? Glorfindel neatly summarizes the problem: there was no believable way Elrohir would ever come to trust Glorfindel enough to follow him willingly, and for Glorfindel to drag him to Rivendell against his will would have been completely OOC.

Even so, writing this chapter was a lot of fun! I enjoyed describing the Elves from an outsider perspective, and the present tense allowed me to really get into Elrohir's head.

How would you have solved Glorfindel's (and my!) problem? Any thoughts about what Elves may have looked like to those Mortals who never heard much good about them? Do you like the chapter's style?

I'd love to hear from you, so make me a happy writer by leaving a review!

Idrils Scribe