A/N: Minor rearrangement since last posting. The story remains un-beta'ed and every time I look at it there's something to fix. I'm sure there's plenty more mistakes herein (would appreciate if you can point them out to me). Quotes later taken from the Appendices of The Lord of the Rings.

*Please drop me a line and let me know what you thought of the story, especially if there's something I should have done better.*

Chapter VIII

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

- e. e. cummings

Eomer

He found her in the Houses of Healing. He was beyond tact, by then. Beyond diplomacy for the sake of gentleness. He wanted to shake her until all the idiotic notions she had accrued were liberated from her head.

"What did you mean by your note?"

She stiffened, then turned to face him as one would an adversary on the field of battle.

There was perhaps nothing so painful as loving someone who used to love you, Eomer thought.

"Did you read it?" Her eyes blazed.

"Yes, I did," he ground out, "and then I burned it. If you're going to tell me that you no longer want to be my wife then you at least owe me the damn courtesy to tell it to my face."

"Then let me do so," she said, coming to a stand and clasping her hands before her, "I make you a dreadful queen –"

"You are an excellent queen," his jaw was clenched so tight he could barely get the words out.

"Let me finish, sir," her voice was no longer it usual, controlled pitch, "I understand you feel obligated to me in some way, and you feel guilty for what happened, but that simply is not true. We no longer have any obligation to each other."

"You are my wife," he spat, "I am responsible for you, whether you like it or not."

She shook her head and began to brush past him.

"No, don't walk away, do you hear me?" Eomer moved in front of her, cutting cut off her exit. He pulled out the drawing, her first drawing of him, from his pocket.

"Do you remember this?"

Her eyes went wide, and she looked at him as if he had discovered something shameful from her past.

It was anguish, he thought, it was anguish on her face. One did not look anguished, if one had completely ceased to care.

It wasn't space she needed from him, Eomer realized then. She had plenty of that in her own head, the space she kept between her thoughts, the space she kept between the inner parts of herself and everyone else, between her and him. She needed him to get close, to get under that veil of distance and to tear it from between her fingers.

If they were to have any happiness, he thought, it depended on this.

"I would ask you to explain what you meant with these words," he said, "do you remember them? You wrote them, on a picture you drew of me, and once upon a time you must have believed them. Would you like me to read them aloud to you, as to refresh your memory?"

She shook her head fiercely, "you know what they mean."

"No, I don't know," he roared, "because you don't tell me a damn thing about what's going on in that head of yours. So tell me why. Explain it to me, in words that even I can understand."

"No," she cried, "no, stop this, Eomer. Stop what ever it is you're doing. I refuse to play your little game."

"Then tell me. Tell me true. Why do you really want to end our marriage?"

"I told you, I wrote it all out," she had tears in her eyes, "It's over, Eomer. There's nothing between us anymore. And it is the only way, to be free. You'll find happiness again, someone else who can make you laugh, make you happy. Someone not me. It's for your own good, don't you see?"

"By Erol's name, Lothiriel, stop doing things for my own good; stop being so damn high-handed you won't even bother to explain what you're thinking, out of some fool concern for my own good. It makes me want to rip every single hair out of my head. Right now I just need to know: do you love me, or not?"

"What does it even matter?"

"It matters. It matters a whole lot."

"Does it make you happy, then, to see me humiliated?" she was shaking now, he could almost hear her control crumble, "have you considered it possible that I said nothing because I didn't want your pity, because I would rather die than have you think me weak and foolish and full of childish feelings for you?

"I do not want love a man who has not the least bit of interest in me, Eomer, I do not want to be that woman any more. If almost dying has taught me anything, it's that I finally know how much of an idiot I have been, to throw my life and my heart away on you. And I am done with it, with all of it."

"And what about these words," he shook the paper at her, "these words you wrote once?"

"Forget them," she stepped back, "forget all about them. Those are my private papers. You had no right to paw through what was not yours. And I am taking those words back."

"Say that again," Eomer said, his own control slipping as he took her by the shoulders and shook, "I dare you to say that again."

"You have never wanted to hear them," tears ran freely down her cheeks, and on her face was fury mingled with grief, "and I don't ever want to feel any of it anymore, do you understand? I want to be through with this, with us, whatever we were. I want to be free."

"What if I told you that I wanted to hear them?" His voice felt thick in his throat.

"What?"

"What if I told you that I would welcome everything you said in here," he continued, "that I have tucked this piece of paper next to my heart for almost every day since you were taken, that I looked at it every time I thought you might not return, just so I could make myself believe that you would come back, for me?"

She wouldn't meet his eyes, her eyes looked everywhere but at him, even though he was only at arm's length.

"I don't know what you're trying to say."

"Don't you understand, you impossible woman?" Eomer cursed softly, "how do I get this through your stubborn skull? I am in love with you; horribly, painfully in love with you. Hell, it hurts me just to look at you now. I love you rotten."

Her eyes widened. All blood fled from her face.

For a second there Eomer thought she understood him.

But in the next second her face crumpled, and instead of throwing herself into his arms she flew at him only to beat those fists – and Osric was right, her hands were surpassing strong – against his chest.

"Damn you, Eomer," she cried, "you bastard. Damn you to whatever hell is reserved for you for all eternity. Don't you dare say that to me, don't you dare mock me now, after all this, after everything that's happened; don't you dare lie to my face, not about this. Not about this."

He reached out to hold her, but she threw off his arms in her rage.

"I can't bear it," her voiced had dropped to a whisper, "How can you be so cruel? It will drive me mad for all time, this. I can't bear hearing you say those things."

She thought he was playing with her.

"But you must," Eomer said, closing his hands on hers, "Do you hear, me Lothiriel? You must bear it, because everything I've said is true. Look at me. Look at my face."

She went still then, and raised her tear-stained face to his.

"I love you, Lothiriel."

She reached out a hand, and shaking slightly she traced the lines of his brow, his nose, his lips. Eomer closed his eyes at the feel of it, the feel of her hand ghosting across his face.

"I love you, Lothiriel."

Then, finally, finally, she was in his arms, her tears hot against his cheek and her body shaking with emotions she could barely contain. He felt how fragile she was, how her hipbones knocked painfully against him and her shoulder blades cut so sharply against her back. She was half-collapsed in his arms, he realized, because her strength had nearly failed her.

Eomer held Lothiriel tighter to him.

"We met earlier on that day, didn't we?" he whispered into her ear, "Eowyn's wedding wasn't the first time I saw you. You were the healer that morning, in the Houses of Healing. You gave me comfort, when I was weeping and in need. You told me that you saw a blessed life for me, and that joy was my fate. You said that you could see my future clear. Do you remember?"

She nodded against his neck.

"I'm sorry for all this," he realized he too was weeping, "for what had happened, for all your pain, for the child; by God I didn't know. I didn't know about our child. But I wanted you to know that all those times you felt alone, abandoned and afraid; all that time I was wondering where you had gone, and why you weren't next to me, by my side, my equal, my queen. Don't you see, Lothiriel? You are my fate. I want no fate but you. I will have no fate but you."

She had finally come to love the chill of autumn, the white glow of winter, Lothiriel thought, but spring came again, and all around them the air was full of birdsong.

She had finally accepted the weight of the world, the casual cruelty of it, and the beastly nature in man; but now this grace, this gentleness, this unexpected joy.

If she could take the pain, then she could take this, too.

"Gods, woman, say something," muttered her husband, "say something."

Her husband.

"Eomer," she said.

There was a rising at the nape of her neck. There was a soft stampede within her veins.

"Eomer," she said, and kissed him.

Lothiriel

Lothiriel, wake up. Wake up!

Lothiriel startled into consciousness. Everything was dark and she didn't know where she was. Arms came around her; rough hands shook her by the shoulders. She fought for air.

She landed a punch.

Somewhere a man groaned.

"It's me, Lothiriel," a voice said, "you're safe now. You're safe."

Eomer.

Lothiriel stilled. His face loomed above her, fear twisting his features. His hands were iron manacles around her wrists, his heavy body lay across hers, his heart pounded against her skin.

"Did I hurt you, Eomer?"

His hands unclenched. His breath escaped him in a gust, stirring her hair. She saw the sweat that beaded on his forehead, the hair that stood straight up on his arms. He sighed, a shuddering sound, and then rolled off of her onto his back, putting the heels of his hands to his eyes.

Then was Lothiriel's turn to sit up in the bed. She put a hand on his shoulder.

"Eomer."

"I'm sorry," he said, "Something woke me and when I looked over at you it seemed that you were not breathing."

She removed his hands from his face and held them in hers.

"I'm sorry," his hands tightened on her arms, "I must have dreamt it. But you were lying so still. I took two breaths, then three, but you took none at all. I panicked."

His hands, large and warm, moved their way up her neck, to her face, and wound themselves into her hair as if trying to find purchase. His face, his dear face, was shadowed.

Lothiriel laid the tips of his fingers against her neck, where her pulse thrummed steadily beneath the skin.

"I'm here," she said, turning a kiss into one burning palm, feeling the prominent beat in his wrist, hearing the hammering of his heart like a distant thunder in her ears, like the far away rush of great waters.

He sat up then in the darkness, arms gathering her close against the hot core of his body. He bent his golden head until the side of his ear was pressed against her breastbone.

"Yes," he said, lips curving against her skin into a smile, "you are."

And as she ran a slow hand through Eomer's hair, he listened to the thud of her heart and the slow waves of her breath, until he had reassured himself that she was, indeed, living.

That morning, Lothiriel knew her resolve was not firm, that she teetered on the edge of some precipice. Seeing him standing there in the gardens, taking up so much of the sky with the breadth of his shoulders, his eyes fixed on her, her heart quaked, her arguments stumbled.

She had steeled herself. She thought, I have faced the murderous crowds of Umbar. I have faced the long hunger of the Cages. I can face my own husband.

But then he said – then he said those words.

And after, blushing furiously, she had taken him by the hand, and led him to the room she lived in once as a student in the Houses of Healing. They gave it back to her when she came, seeking shelter. The furniture was scarred, the small space too narrow for two.

The dark wooden shelves were lined with books, explaining the creature that was Man, detailing the workings of his heart and bones, his nerves, his mind. Papers were scattered on the desk where she had been sitting, unable to start a sketch.

She looked at the small, narrow bed on which she slept alone for many years, with nothing but her studies to accompany her. She could feel the blaze of heat in her cheeks.

Across the room, he stood. His eyes held her face. He opened his arms, and this time Lothiriel went into them.

Lothiriel wondered if she had dreamed the whole of it, if she was dreaming, even now. But his hands were moving again, trailing a slow line from her neck down her back.

There was so much loneliness in the world, and Lothiriel had glimpsed it in that cage. And despite everything that had happened, despite all her good fortune, it was still waiting for her: we must all die alone.

But there were also the moments when she felt the singularity of her existence expanded; when in the throes of their lovemaking it seemed an outrage to think that she and Eomer had ever been two creatures, separate, apart from one another. In those moments, when pleasure circumvented her reasoning mind, when she went by feeling alone, it seemed as if they had always had a link between them, and that link would survive beyond the ending of all things.

Afterwards, he slept again, an arm thrown behind his head and his mouth slightly open, the way he always slept, Lothiriel stared up into the darkness.

The wind was balmy; it was the warmest night of spring. There was a sound on the air, far away in her ears, almost like the rush of waves.

Their clothes had been discarded much earlier, and the slanting moon shone full on Eomer's bare skin. She took the catalog of his scars, as she used to do in their great bed in the Golden Hall, by firelight.

Except for the burns across the back of his hands – she still had to go visit the man they rescued from the Cages, Lothiriel remembered – Eomer had acquired no new marks.

There was the notch in his collarbone, where an Uruk sword had ricocheted off armor and bit into his flesh. There was the raised scar across his ribs, one acquired after the war; the wound re-opened and she had to set a second row of stitches into his skin. There too, the old star-shaped remnant of an arrow-wound in his thigh, so close to the great artery that she still shuddered to look on it.

One night, long ago, Lothiriel had asked Eomer to tell her the stories behind all of his scars.

They are not pleasant tales, wife. I would rather you tell me of your scars,He had teased.

She had but one, a small nick on her right hip from an old fall. Amrothos had pushed her off an old skiff on account of some terrible offense, and the edge of an oar caught her on the way down.

In the great expanse of their bed, he had examined that scar, puny and insubstantial next to his wounds. He slid a finger across it as if to test its permanence. Then he had pressed his lips there.

Lothiriel looked now for that tiny ribbon of raised flesh where thigh met hip.

The scar was not there.

Lothiriel frowned. She could remember how hard her younger self had cried, though the prince's healer had told her she would have only a small mark.

It's barely the size of my fingertip, he said.

But I would have it forever; she said.I would be marked forever.

And it was no longer there.

For the sake of completeness she looked over on her left hip, which was also smooth in the night.

Next to her, Eomer slept on.

Lothiriel thought of how fast she seemed to recover, after her ordeal. She remembered how carefully Lord Celeborn had examined the healed cut on her fingers, where Corin's blood mingled with hers. It did not seem so strange to her, until now.

There was a distant drumming in her ears.

She looked at her hands, and realized that she no longer had the hands she did that night. Her hands looked strong. Her hands felt strong.

The drumming went on, the sound of two rhythms locked one against the other.

Lothiriel realized that it was not her heart she heard.

It was Eomer's heart. And she could hear it beating from where he lay beside her, across the expanse of air.

And the other sound under it, the slow crest that came again and again, was not a sound that she could never forget. She had heard it every day when she lived in Dol Amroth.

It was the sound of waves, the endless waves of the sea breaking upon the shore.

There was not much time. Lothiriel would have to be in the White City before the sun rose to its zenith, for King Elessar had summoned her to council. But that morning she hunted for a millennia-old elf lord in the forest behind Ithilien.

It was as if she could sense where he was, a cool corner of moonlight tucked against the greening trees. She went into the forest and found him, high up, perched in the crown of a beech tree.

"Lord Celeborn," she called.

It was difficult to say what happened next. Lothiriel thought he might have simply glided down, two feet on the smooth sides of the beech bark, one hand outstretched to brace himself. Or perhaps he simply flew.

His robes fluttered about him. He landed with barely a sound.

Sometimes, when he did such things – ran for a whole evening without pause, sailed down from fifty feet in the air, she wondered if he were corporeal at all, or if he was just a thought made manifest, a mind taken on visible form.

He scented her purpose before she even gave voice to it.

"You have questions for me," he said.

She paused, looking into his face only to find her own regard reflected.

"A scar that I acquired when I was very young; a scar that I've had all my life has vanished."

He nodded.

"Did you know?" She asked.

"I suspected."

"What's happening to me?"

He glanced down at his feet. He sighed.

"Please," She asked.

He was quiet for another moment, as if trying to make up his mind.

"When I came upon you that night in the woods," he began to walk, long strides taking him rapidly between new blooming trees, "you weren't breathing. You weren't breathing or moving at all."

Lothiriel followed after him.

"In my many years, I have seen life and death over and over," he said, " and you were dead when I found you; I was certain of it."

He frowned at the memory. His steps faltered in the shade of a green oak.

"I waited. Five minutes, without movement or breath. And then you raised your head and looked straight at me. Why do you think I was so ill-at-ease when we met that night? Why do you think I interrogated you when it should have been obvious that you were a victim? I don't know who was more frightened, in that moment."

"Then how am I still here?"

"I suppose you couldn't have been dead; but you were close. Something brought you back from the edge. For it was Corin who you met in the Cages, was it not? It was his blood that mingled with yours, in that wound in your hand. Blood called to blood, and something that slept all these long years in the line of Dol Amroth woke that night, when you were at the limits of your endurance."

He sighed, and ran his fingers over a new unfurling leaf of the great oak.

"You will notice that you can see farther, hear better. Your human gracelessness will be stripped from you. People, who are any kind of people, will notice."

"Eomer was afraid that I had stopped breathing, last night."

"You do need air. But two or three breaths a minute is all you require, not ten or twelve; which can be very disconcerting for an attentive lover."

Then Lothiriel said, "I think I can hear the sea, far off in the distance."

His eyes flickered to hers, in alarm.

"You can hear the sea?" he repeated.

"I know the sound," she said.

"So you do," he said, his hand stilling, "I had hoped you would be spared that part, at least. That sea-longing."

"So I must ask you again," there was a strange pain in her throat, "What am I, exactly?"

"I don't know," he said, "I only know what you are not. And you are not elven-kind, but neither are you fully human either. Since that night, when something awoke in your blood, you've become an uneasy mixture of the two. Thus you may live to see all the days of this age, and all the ones that come after, for you may have the longevity of elves. But if you hear the sea, then you have a choice. Perhaps the choice had always been here, running in the blood of the sons and daughters of Elros. "

"What choice?"

"You may never have to accept that bitter cup which is the Doom of Men. For if the sea calls to you, lady, then you may take to the sea and go West, if that is your desire."

"That's not possible," she said.

"Maybe not," he agreed, "but it has happened."

"But that's," she swallowed, "That's Luthien's choice – Arwen's choice. I'm… I'm human. I am ordinary. And why would I go? Everything I have is here. All my life, all the people I love."

He looked at her with pity.

"Not always, Lothiriel. Not for always, not in this Middle-earth," he looked away, looked to the West, where everything he loved had gone, "This land promises us nothing for certain."

King Elessar had called her for a meeting in the highest tier of the city. Lothiriel thought she was to give account of what had happened to her in Harad, but it was not so.

The bright spring sun of Gondor poured in through great windows. They had gathered around a table on which was spread a large map of Southern Gondor and Near Harad.

Grimund was there, tight-lipped and somber as ever, though he nodded to her; eyes shining. There were men of the Mark present; other members of her rescue party. She greeted them warmly.

So too there was Amrothos, with whom she had reunited the first evening. He had gathered reports from his men and Erchirion's. He laid down a map: the City of the Corsairs. Every street was outlined, the whole spoke-wheel array of the metropolis drawn down to its finest details, and then over the map, an outline of red, to indicate how much the fire had spread.

The fire that night, Amrothos said, had consumed most of the great port city, raging through the stalls and the markets by the water, destroying hundreds of docks on the edge of the water.

It had burned through the great workshops of the shipwrights of Umbar. It had consumed the repository of their fuel and also their arsenal. By the time the rain finally started, the fire had reached so far as the citadel. The once-white walls, Amrothos said, were now black.

"Aragorn," Eomer braced both arms on the table and leaned in, "there is no better time than now to strike at the heart of the Haradrim, to strike at the City of the Corsairs."

Stunned, Lothiriel looked around her again, at the group of people assembled. Faramir was there, his brows knitted carefully together, and Eowyn beside him, her mouth set in a line.

Gondor, Rohan, Dol Amroth, she counted. All the northern realms of men, united in this room.

It was a council of war.

"I agree," Amrothos said, "If we raise an army and go by sea, we can make a foothold in that city, and further inland as well. This is their greatest port; cut it off and the landlocked parts of the country will dry up. Cut off the head and the whole beast will die."

Aragorn studied the map.

"The harvests have been good these last few years, my lord," Faramir said, "the land heals. If you want an army, men will come to your banners."

"Dol Amroth will give our navy and our ships. Our shipwrights are ready to build at your command," Amrothos said.

"And what of Rohan?"

"The harvest is good," Grimund replied," men may love peace, but in Rohan they love courage better. And best of all they love Eomer Eadig."

"I will take the oath of Erol, Aragorn," Eomer said, "my armies will follow yours wherever you go."

War.Lothiriel thought.

"And what of you, Lothiriel?" The King of Gondor turned his clear grey eyes to her, "what says the queen of Rohan?"

She once told the Jurist that she would knock the Cages to the ground, that she would break the bones of the Lords of Umbar and Harad. But Lothiriel felt none of that rage, now. There was a sickness in her stomach.

She remembered the faces that came before her Cage. Mothers and wives, brothers and fathers. The faces of ordinary people. She thought of the Jurist – the Jurist, who had taken her, and who had let her go.

She thought, if we go to war now, it will be my fault; the blood of Harad and Gondor and Rohan will be on my hands. And she would become as Anarwyn had been, fell and despairing. The blood of the innocent on her hands will not fade.

She was a healer. She had been a healer before she was a queen. How could she stand for this?

They were waiting, still. Eomer was looking at her. Faramir was looking at her.

Lothiriel forced herself to speak.

She said, "In truth, sire, this is not what I want."

She could feel their eyes on her. Attuned to him as she was, Eomer's confusion was an almost palpable wave against her skin. It was the first time she had opposed him in an open council.

"I know that you would have spared us this, if you could," said Aragorn.

She nodded tightly.

"Lothiriel," Amrothos started, "Lothiriel, they tried to kill you."

"Some of them, maybe," she clasped her hands in her lap, "But they are not orcs, Amrothos. They are not beasts, not monsters. They are man-kind; our kind. I have seen them, and they are just like you and me."

"Your words ring true, lady. And your restraint must be commended," Aragorn waved a hand to silence the other protests, "We will think more on this before proceeding. And I must speak with Imhrahil."

About ships, she thought. Aragorn will need to speak to Father about ships to hold the soldiers.

And there would be war.

Eomer had stalked after her as they left the audience chambers, and with a firm arm steered her into the maze of hallways. They stepped into a small library. He closed the door.

"Lothiriel, this is beyond reason," Eomer said. "I cannot believe that on this thing you might fight me."

"Eomer," she said, "I don't want to be the reason people go to war, I won't have innocent men and women die on my account."

"You are a queen now, Lothiriel," Eomer's hair was ragged with the way he ran his hands through it, "you must bear it. People will die because of decisions you make. That is what it means, to be a queen."

"I was to be your queen in a time of peace," she said, "I was to be your queen in a time when the land was healing, when wars were at an end."

"You are the queen of Rohan, Lothiriel, in peacetime and in war," he lowered his voice, tried to speak in a gentler tone, "we are Rohan. And we do not quail in the face of conflict; we do not look away from war. I told you once, we cannot leave such a threat as Harad sitting south of our borders. So we fight; we fight to keep what happened when Saruman razed the Westfold from ever happening again."

Her head ached, "This is a pre-emptive attack, Eomer. Why should we go to war without any offence?"

"And what," he roared, "did you think was going to happen, from the moment that you were taken? Did you think that you could have avoided this? Did you think that by simply leaving your medallion you could have prevented this?"

"I thought that I could," she said, "I thought that it would be enough. Eomer. I don't want the blood of our people on my hands. I thought, I just thought that I'd come home and find everything - "

"The way it was?" He said, bitterly, "Lothiriel, you know better. They took you to start a war. And we will give them one, but on our terms, not theirs."

"So be it," her throat felt hoarse with the frustration of it, "so be it, have your war. But not with me. I don't want to be a part of it."

"What are you saying? Lothiriel?"

"I don't know," she said. "I don't know. But if I hadn't been stupid, then, maybe none of this would have happened. Maybe it would never have happened if I never came home. Maybe it won't happen, if I'm not here."

"Don't ever say that," his hands were on her shoulders, his eyes afire, "Don't ever say something like that to me again. This would have happened one day, regardless, do you understand? You might be the catalyst, but it was not your fault."

"Please, let us not argue," she said, puling away from him. She could not risk going into his embrace. "Please, not so soon, not now."

"Lothiriel, come," he reached out to her again, "You are upset."

"I'm sorry, sir," she said, "you're right. I am upset. I need to think."

"My name is Eomer," he said, taking another step closer, "Gods, woman, do you doubt me already? I do not argue this with you because I have changed my heart of you, but because it is an impossible problem. And I thought that if you were with me, then at least there would be two of us to think about it, two of us to fight against it. Do you understand?"

"I know," she said, "you're right. And I don't want to run from you again. Give me some time. I need to think, I need some distance. For all I feel now is horror."

He reined himself back, but with an effort.

"What is there to think about, Lothiriel?"

"Everything, Eomer. All of it."

Almost unconsciously, her steps took her back to the place where she had been useful, where she always felt the peace that comes with knowing her place in the world. Lothiriel passed the gates of the Houses of Healing.

What was the point of what she went through in the Cages, if it only led to more pain, more suffering?

She wished that life wouldn't be such a fight, that she wouldn't have to fight every day for what she believed in, or even for her right to live in the world. But the fight was never over. There would always be another war. There was always more sickness.

If the sea calls to you, then you may take to the sea and go West, if that is your desire.

To a place without war. To a place without death.

She told Eomer she wanted to think, but all she could think of was how different this homecoming was, compared to what she had dreamed.

Ambivalent was too bland a word for it, she thought; the feeling of being torn between ecstatic joy, for her husband loved her, and a desire to run, far, far away from this place.

How much more complicated everything had become.

The healers knew her. They told her that Eomer's patient, the only one who had been retrieved alive from the Cages, was awake and speaking.

The Burned Man, they called him, though he sustained no serious burn injuries, except some minor ones to his back. It was the smell of flames, they told Lothiriel; the smell of burning that still clung to him like a perfume, and his voice, which was ruined, sounded like he had swallowed fire. There was great scar across his face, which was healing, but slowly. He had the lungs of a man twice his age. But he lived.

Lothiriel took with her a change of dressings and some fresh water. Through the open window she glimpsed the dark head and the white corner of a bandage. He was sitting up against the pillows, letting the spring air fall upon his ruined face.

But it wasn't until she came through the door that she saw the other half of his face, the part untouched by the sword.

His hair had been shorn; the brows and the fine beard singed off. Half his head was bandaged, and beneath it the edges of a livid scar shone out, red and purple, contracting against the skin.

He looked different enough that she almost didn't recognize him; without his robes, without that quiet pride, without the deadly promise of the sword sheathed by his side.

But Lothiriel looked again. There was the clear grey eye, the still-proud nose, and the full mouth, which had always been too gentle for his face. She came to a standstill.

The burned man inclined his head, stiffly and with pain, from where he lay in the bed.

"Lady," he said.

"Jurist."

When the darkness was full, he had climbed into her Cage and carried her out.

He had draped a dark cloak over both of them and ran. His lungs ached with exertion. He went on, until the streets passed behind them, until the ground rose, until they came under the shade of trees, until it was cool dirt and the softness of grass underfoot.

"You still breathed, then," he said, "but the pulse was faint in your neck. You had lost a great deal of blood. So I left you by the water. And I went back to my Judgment."

"Why save me at all, when I was going to die?"

The Jurist was quiet.

And then he said, " the locks on those Cages are intricate and strange. They are made by masters to be indecipherable, unbreakable, unless the Cage itself were broken.

"Yet I had your lock set upon the code that would open the door, every night. A single tug would have freed it, for I expected them to come for you. But no one came. And you never attempted to climb out. I suppose that you hated me far too much to think it possible."

He smiled bleakly at the shock on her face.

"Could you have walked out of the cages? maybe, maybe not. There are many guards at night."

But it would not have been an impossibility, Lothiriel thought. It would not have been altogether impossible.

"I knew that you would not try it; it would have been unheard of, and yet I lived in expectation of it every night, in fear and expectation that the next morning when I arrived the cage would be empty, but it never was.

"And then I started to think, what if I told you? What if I simply let you go? I am your Jurist; I control your fate, your freedom. But I was afraid. And I did nothing.

"So I waited, until I waited too long. You did not know you were with child, did you? I could hear it in your voice when you called for me. I told you then, in the beginning, one must go into the cage, and one must die. The terms were fulfilled, when I let you free. But I should have been less of a coward. And this is what happened, because I was a coward, because I feared so much that everything I have ever learned was wrong."

She felt a sting in her eyes, but tears did not come. She reached over and took the Jurist's hands firmly in hers, pressed them.

"I am not the hero of this story, Lady," he said, "I am the villain."

"Tell me what happened."

They had put him in his own Cage, that very evening. For failing to be the eye and ears and arms of the law, they told him, they would take each of those things from him, slowly, day by day. And the first evening, it was his eye.

"Then the fire came," he coughed, "the fire came, and I thought it must have been the vengeance that you promised us."

He lay back against the pillow.

Lothiriel drew close. She lifted a hand, and with growing confidence worked at the edges of the dressing, until the wound was exposed to the air.

It was closing well. The edges had been trimmed clean of debris, the stitches over the forehead and cheek held almost no tension on the skin. The eyelid was empty, and closed. They might find a patch for him, one day, Lothiriel thought. Aside from the violacious color of it, where the vessels of his face had been cut through, it was a clean wound.

She blotted at the edges of it, wiping away the old blood.

"There's no need to keep it wrapped, now," she told him, "the skin has closed over."

He clenched his jaw as she removed the rest of the wrappings around his head.

"It's not so very bad, Jurist," she said, "I think you might actually look quite dashing, with an eye-patch."

He said, "My death is yours, Lady. It seems that fate had spared me for this, so that I might come into your hands."

"You are my charge now, Jurist," she told him, "my task is to look after your welfare, not your death."

His grip was still strong when he caught her hand.

"Do not play with me, lady," he said, "at least give me the degree of dignity that I had accorded to you."

She sat down by him. The cool wind blew in through the window, falling on those razed locks of his.

"Or perhaps we will spare one another, Jurist," she said.

He was silent. He closed his good eye seemed to focus on his breathing once more.

"They mean to go to war, you know" she said.

He did not open his eye.

"They mean to attack Umbar while it is still weak, and from there to subdue all of Harad."

"It is a sound plan," he said.

"I don't want to go to war," she said.

"Would your armies slaughter women and children?" he asked, "God knows you have enough reason to invade. But would your armies raze the city again to the ground, or would they allow them their lives?"

"How does it matter?" she asked.

"It matters," he said, "it matters."

The grey eye opened, and looked at her.

"You are uncomfortable with the idea that men would die for you? How strange, in a queen, how rare," he shook his head, "you would rather rescue the sickly, because then you may never have to question yourself, because then you think you are free from all the uncertainty and the complications, from the dirty fight of it all. But you are not. You are not free of it; you are in the thick of it. Even you, Lady, cannot live blameless.

"You are a healer, but one day you will injure a patient. You are a queen, and one day, the innocent and loyal will die because of you."

"All my life I wanted to stand in the light. To be beyond reproach," he laughed, a terrible, guttural sound, "I wanted to be the eyes and ears and arms of the law. But I've been wrong; more than wrong, I've been unjust. I have been a fool. "

"I wish there was somewhere," she said, "beyond the reach of war. Where we are free that constant, unending fight?"

"There is, Lady," he closed his eyes again as if his speech had wearied him, "Do you understand how many nights I have lain awake, thinking of making an end of this farce of a life? There is such a place beyond the fighting, as you say; but that place is called death."

"It won't work forever, you know," Eomer said.

"What won't?"

"This, Lothiriel," he tossed back the blankets and ran a hand through his hair, still breathing hard, "trying to overwhelm me so that we don't have to talk."

She brought herself up to her elbows and smiled at him.

"Am I overwhelming you?"

"I think, wife," he turned a kiss onto her bare shoulder, "you know exactly what effect you have on me."

Lothiriel rose then, and pushed at him until he fell back onto the bed. She let the mass of her hair flow over his skin, pressed a kiss to the sensitive spot beneath his earlobe, and trailed her fingers down the plane of his stomach. His eyelids fluttered shut. She heard his breath catch.

"Do you yield, sir?"

A lazy smile.

"Yield, lady? Never. A Rider of Rohan does not – "

But Lothiriel never did find out what a Rider of Rohan does or does not do, for she set her mouth upon his skin and her hands against his straining flesh, and besieged him as gamely and stubbornly as a Marshall of the Mark would besiege an enemy, until he bucked against her, until his hands twisted in the sheets. His face was clenched in an expression between pleasure and pain.

Then he cried out. For the space of moment, he was utterly beyond reach - in some sunlit patch of the ocean; upon shores not of this Middle-earth.

Lothiriel moved up to lay beside him, and brushed his sweat-soaked hair out of his face.

"I yield," he was saying, somewhat breathlessly, "I yield."

Lothiriel took one of his big hands and pressed a kiss to it.

You're mine, she thought.

It was one of the things Amrothos always said when he tried to explain to her what it was between him and Thalion, one of the things that confused her the most. But now, somehow, it rang clear and true.

You're mine, she thought, as I have been yours since first I saw you.

Eomer opened his eyes. He watched in silence as she ministered to the fading burn marks on his hand with her lips.

Then he said, "I'm sorry, Lothiriel."

"For what?" she murmured against his hand.

"For what? You ask me that? Very well then. I am sorry for the year when you were unhappy in Rohan. For not being a husband with whom you could share your burdens. For doubting your heart when you have the truest heart."

"Eomer."

His fingers nudged her chin. She lifted her eyes to his.

"I know you still doubt me," he said.

"Eomer – "

"Hush," two fingers covered her lips, "I would doubt me too, if I were you. A year's worth of – I don't even know how I behaved, save that it pains me to think of you suffering in silence because of me. And now, when I've only begun to make reparations, I plunge us headfirst into war."

Lothiriel sat back on her heels. Her mouth felt dry. The languor of their lovemaking faded like fog in the sun.

"If I were you," his calluses were rough against her skin, "I would wonder how this man could speak words of love to me, and yet do that which seems to be its opposite."

"Eomer – "

"Can you deny it?"

"Don't do this," she said.

"I'm sorry," he said, turning her face until she met his eyes again, "I am. But we can't go on as we did before, keeping secrets from one another. So please, tell me. I know this look of yours, this distant, quiet mood. I know that you must doubt me."

"Eomer."

His hand tightened against her skin.

"I'm no good at it. It's all new to me, all of this. If you're distant because you doubt me – because you doubt my heart, I deserve it. I know I deserve it full well, but I swear to you I will spend the rest of my days showing you, telling you, loving – "

"I know your heart is true," Lothiriel whispered against his mouth, to stop his words, "I know you. I know your heart is true."

But he was not deterred.

"Then what is it? What is it you're not telling me? Lothiriel?"

This time she was weeding in the garden when Celeborn found her.

"He is a good man, your husband," said the Lord of the Golden Wood.

When he woke in the morning, Eomer demanded to meet with Celeborn. And Lothiriel had been there to witness the strange introduction between the two.

She did not know why Eomer was so silent, until she realized that he was fighting against that wellspring of emotion inside him, as he so often did. It gave him that puzzled look on his face, that fierce frown.

She knew that look now. Finally she knew that look and understood it.

"My lord," Eomer said, "I will never forget all that you have done, for Lothiriel and for me."

Then he extended his hand to Celeborn and swore eternal friendship between the house of Erol and the elves of the Golden Wood.

"For all the years that you remain in Middle-earth," Eomer said, "for all years that my heirs dwell in this land, you will have our friendship and our good-will."

And Lothiriel could tell that Celeborn had been moved, more than a little, as he took Eomer's arm.

"Is that so?" she asked.

"And he adores you," said the elf-lord.

She looked at him.

"He does," he said, "anyone with eyes can see it."

Then he said, "how much did you tell him?"

A beat.

"I hardly knew what to tell him," Lothiriel said.

She swallowed.

"He knows there is strangeness in my blood."

"What of your sea-longing?"

"The sea," she repeated, "What was I to say? That it pains me to stay here with him, but it would pain me more to leave? How does one even speak of it, to someone who doesn't feel it? Do you feel it, My Lord? Is it the same for you?"

"Do I feel it?" he looked at her, "that terrible longing for relief, the ache of a heart wanting to be at ease? I feel it, Lothiriel. And the heart is rarely ever at ease, is it? Not here, in this Middle-earth."

She said, not looking at him, "will you ever go West, do you think?"

"Not yet," He said, "but it is a choice we have to face."

"No," Lothiriel said, "no, my lord. You see, that was one thing I could tell him, the one certain thing, that I would never leave his side as long as we both lived, if he wished it."

"Because you love him?"

"Because whatever happens, I would have him. And he would have me."

"And was he happy with your answer?"

"He said,it is enough."

And strangely the elven lord began to smile. He smiled at her with such sweetness in that ancient face that it seemed to pierce her to the heart.

"I had a daughter, who met with grief upon these shores," he said, "A thousand years ago she went to the Havens and across the sea. In some ways you remind me of her, Lothiriel, but I am glad you choose to stay, that you choose to face the risk of this Middle-Earth. For it is not without danger."

"You fought during the war," she said, "for the Golden Wood?

"Galadriel and I fought against Dol Guldur," he said, "where once Sauron held great power. And we won."

"If there must be fighting, I will not allow my men to risk for me what I am unwilling to risk for them," Lothiriel said, "You once said that a weapon like Corin's would suit me quite well. And, since I am to stay - will you teach me to use it?"

"It would be my pleasure."

In predawn shadows, a strong arm came around her.

Eomer's hand found hers, there in the darkness. She burrowed against him, and as she sank again into the warmth of sleep it seemed that a man stood there before her.

Share it with me, he said. It was Eomer, all the faces he would ever wear in youth and in old age. But she could see beyond it, to him, to the thing that was at the heart of him, to the fire that burned between those eyes, without beginning or end.

Share it with me,he said, the risk of this human life. In the darkness I will take your hand, and lead you to where I am.

He said, Every meeting is a parting. In every beginning is an end. And on the darkest days, every moment is a battle. This is the risk of our human world.

It frightens me,she said.

But I will be by your side, my love, he said, as you will be by mine.

Share it with me, the risk of this Middle-Earth.He said. And at the ending of it, fly free with me to the doom that comes after, fly with me beyond the cages of this world.

She said,I will.

Epilogue

Eomer took again the Oath of Erol, and wherever King Elessar went to war King Eomer went with him.

And beyond the Sea of Rhun and on the far fields of the South, where dwelt the tribes of the Haradrim and their seafaring allies, the thunder of the cavalry of the Mark was heard, and the White Horse upon Green flew in may winds.

And ever beside her king and husband there too rode Lothiriel, Queen of Rohan. Tall she stood among the men of the West, dark haired and fierce in her beauty. In her hand shone a long axe once wielded by the elven warriors of Lothlorien, and that weapon she used with deadly force in the face of her enemies.

In the City of the Corsairs she led the charge through hosts of the pirate lords and the Southrons who aided them, for she had once suffered great sorrow at the hands of the Haradrim, though one of their warriors fought now by her side.

With her own eyes she saw to the breaking of the Cages of Harad, and had the stone cast into the sea so that none might ever again know what she had known, or see what she had seen. And when they had taken the city, the Armies of Gondor and Rohan saw to the freeing of the slaves who had labored there; they brought food and supply to the common folk, who suffered most in times of war.

Among the people of Rohan, it was rumored that the Princes and Princesses of Dol Amroth were descended from elves, and among them Lothiriel in particular had been charged with the fëa of the eldar. Indeed, when Eomer's first son was born, grey-eyed and golden haired, Celeborn of Lothlorien emerged from his travels among the deep shadows of Middle-earth to be present for the christening of the babe, who was called Elfwine, Elf-friend.

As years passed and Eomer's mane began to take a silver sheen, it was noted that Lothiriel remained nearly as she was in the hour of her youth, though her wisdom grew with her strength. But the people had grown to love their queen. Eomer they named the Blessed; and Lothiriel, the Unfaded. Though the gift of the eldar could also be a burden, for some said that Lothiriel felt a longing for the sea all her life.

Yet while Eomer lived Lothiriel stayed ever by her lord's side, in peacetime and in war, for there was great love between them.

It was not until ten years after Eomer's passing, when Elfwine sat firm upon the throne of the Riddermark, and the Golden Hall was filled again with the laughter of the children of the King, that the house woke one morning to find Lothiriel departed.

Some said that days later they saw a skiff sailing into the Bay of Belfalas at the coming of night with a lone woman at its bow, her dark hair loosed in the wind. And if it had been Lothiriel on that ship, where she went then none now know.

Perhaps she took the straight path to the elven home beyond the sea. Perhaps she journeyed to another land, to another shore, and took on a different name, for she loved life and the sight of new lands and the language and music of a new people.

Or perhaps she had pushed off the dock alone that evening, taking with her only her favored weapon and her drawings of her lord - as he was in the golden days of his youth, as he was in his twilit age - that she might see him better in her mind. Perhaps she waited for the night's cover, waited until she had gone far into the blue water, until all the sounds of cities and men had been left behind.

And then, surrounded by the sea and the stars, surrounded by the memory of one she loved, she chose that evening the doom of men and passed beyond the circles of this world.

The cage is empty. The birds have flown.