A wind roared in the pines. The moon wavered in the night sky and dimmed as grey-edged clouds boiled and streamed from the North. Legolas looked up. Something was coming.
Orcs yowled and yammered, little more than crawling insects beneath him, as he swayed in the topmost branches of a full-canopied beech. Perhaps they smelled his blood, as he smelled theirs. Or perhaps they too sensed the uncanny thing splitting the tapestry of the heavens, driving towards them like a blizzard.
Agent of the Enemy or no, if it distracted the horde long enough for him to slip away and be about his journey, it would prove a friend to him, as nothing else had these long months in the wilderness.
Waiting, watching, he slipped easily into memory, the bright scene not less real for being past. Two states merged and he was at once a lone traveller, hiding from a nest of orcs, and Legolas Thranduilin, stepping out onto the polished floor of his father's hall.
The dwarf-made cavern was lit by many lamps, hung with figured silks, full of a music of water and the silence caused by many people watching intently. On the dais Thranduil sat, almost indolent, a crown of woodland flowers on his shining hair.
Legolas knelt, not deceived for an instant. The poor, foolish Man who had tried to found a colony in Greenwood the Great - what was his name? ...something uncouth, - had mistaken Thranduil's lounging grace for weakness and been sent away greatly chastened. The Elvenking rested like a cat, ever ready to strike out if it became needful.
"My father. What is your command?"
"Stand, Legolas. Let them see you."
He rose and faced the court, curious as to what this summons was about, but trusting. Their gazes pierced him like many arrows, and he straightened a little, lifting his chin.
"This is my son. You see upon him the impression of my line and the resemblance of his mother the Queen; now gone into the Undying Lands."
At last! Though he had not been impatient he had been waiting a very long time for this. He allowed the surge of great joy to just lift the corner of his mouth as his father, the King, spoke on.
"I am well pleased with him. Today I wish my subjects to acknowledge him as their Prince."
One glance spoke the welling up of his heart - the praise and thanks which clamoured to be given voice in song. It told him that his father too rejoiced in this moment.
And then Pelargon arose, smoothing the front of his dawn-silver robe. "A son is born of the loins, but a Prince is born of deeds. Legolas is untried."
There was a moment in which his anger threatened to move him. They must all have seen the flash of it as his face tightened. But Pelargon was wise, and to meet wisdom with force was to be defeated. "Test me then," he said at last.
"No test is necessary in my eyes." Thranduil stepped down beside him so that their cloaks touched, and he turned with gratitude.
"But I should like to be tested. So that everyone will know - so that I will know - that I am worthy of this honour."
"Very well."
And then Thranduil had sat once more upon his throne, taken up his sceptre and spoken from his majesty, rather than his love. "Legolas, you will go into the East, to the Drowned Lands. You will go alone, and you will return bearing with you a gem from the throne of Elu Thingol, King of Doriath. Do you accept this doom?"
"I accept it, Lord."
And so now he swayed above a defilement of goblins and watched, with them, a shape of wingless flame borne on a streaming wind come hurrying up the night before him. Ai! A Balrog, perhaps? And I am already overmatched with orcs.
The winds curled past him and were gone, yet still the shape hung in the sky, circling. A thing of fire and smoke and fitful glimpses of silver. Messenger of the Valar? Or Demon? He did not know.
Its breath thrashed the tree in which he clung. The stars trembled in the heavens. "A Elbereth!" he swore, softly, even as its eyes opened, bathing his wary face with azure light.
It must have been a trick of the concussion, Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn thought as he braced himself against a bulkhead. The scoutship's braking thrusters fired erratically and the artificial gravity was long gone, so that he couldn't tell from moment to moment which way was up, or what it was he was going to fall on next.
It must have been hallucination, or some trick of the wormhole, which made him see - just for a moment - a flat world. Like a concept from childhood; anachronous, primitive, ancient. As he hauled himself into the pilot's chair and knotted the broken straps across his lap he looked out of the viewscreen, half expecting to see it again. Would it be encircled by a dragon? Carried on the back of a gryphon? Curtained by an endless waterfall?
But it must have been the effect of his unconscious mind, because the world towards which he plummeted now was as perfect and beautiful a sphere as any other. Think about it later. If there is a later. Concentrate.
Thin streamers of superhot air writhed across the window. Instruments shorted and spat as he wrenched control from a computer which still thought he was in Coruscant space. Why would the repulsors not work?
Machines! Never his best subject. He opened an access panel and looked helplessly at the wires and circuits. Fire outside tore past, making a shrill whistle through the cabin. The ship fell like a bird with broken wings.
Aware of the Force, he abandoned all memory of blueprints and chose two wires on instinct - his situation could hardly get worse, after all. Touching them together made a jolt go through his whole body, stirring his hair. When the engines roared back to life he was a link in the conduit of power - briefly - until he forced his shaking fingers to twist the contacts together and put them down.
"Computer? Status of the fuel cells?" He'd levelled the ship, but he didn't like the way it dragged.
"Point 376 of operational capacity."
Just enough to get down safely, as long as it was soon.
Mountains stretched up to scratch the underside of the craft - its protective coating still alight and smoking. Snow-heavy clouds boiled away from its heat, and the hull discharged in flashes of purple lightning. Coaxing the last drops of power from the cells he awaited the Force's will, hoping it would show him where to land before it became impossible to do anything other than drop.
Not yet. Warning lights stained his fingers crimson. Engines faltered. Speed and gravity pulled.
Not yet. Sometimes the Force's sense of humour was very wearing. Shutting off all screens, all life support he sat in the dark. Without the cooling systems the hull's red heat seeped into the air, making it waver above the useless instruments. But it gave him enough power to travel another hundred miles.
Here!
The repulsors lit - like a miracle. He lowered the ship carefully, not knowing if he landed on snow, sand or even water. A faint tremor went through the floor. It was hard to accept the living moment - the reassurance that after all that chaos he had indeed landed safely.
His hands were shaking. Looking at them curiously he saw both palms were burnt. Perhaps I won't use myself as an electric cable again, he thought, amused, as he set the fuel cells to recharge.
Nothing worked - doors had to be cranked open by hand, and it was tomb-dark. There was no way of telling if the atmosphere outside was poisonous or not, but the air within was swiftly becoming too hot to breathe. Time to see where he was.
Something rattled on the outer airlock door, and faintly through the metal came the sound of screaming. Though it was black inside he sensed another kind of darkness pressing there. Ah, he thought, sighing, I should have guessed.
Voices shouted, harsh, hateful, and blows rained down on the ship. Clubs, from the sound, Qui-Gon thought, and some metallic scraping; possibly swords. There were ...thirty two of them, he thought, concentrating. Easy odds for a Jedi against men armed with blasters - but with these short range weapons things became much more difficult.
The door lurched half open as he wound it one-handed. An arm snaked in; clawed, grey-green as a corpse, filthy and already charring where it rubbed against the metal. Before thought, instinctively, he seized it and pulled the creature onto the lit blade of his sabre.
What are you doing?! It's a sentient - you should have at least tried to talk. The body fell from his hand and at once there was another, two more crowding behind that, studying him while he stood appalled at himself.
They had such dead eyes.
The larger of the three had passed some comment back in its ugly language. He caught the word ghash repeated many times through the crowd.
Training told him to put down the sabre, project peace for all he was worth and begin to negotiate. The Force said Kill. Sickened, his faith wavered. It had never demanded this of him before - not as a first option.
He was almost relieved when the creatures drew back from the door and began throwing lit balls of pitch into the airlock - burning him out.
Kill them. Flames were licking at his ankles, trying to catch on his robe. The air was acrid and thick. He had built his life on trusting the Force. Why should he stop now?
Thrusting a hand out, he pushed the creatures back, flinging their crude incendiaries into their faces. Then he stepped through the door and locked it, knowing that whatever happened they must not get the ship.
The little pause had allowed them to get to their feet. Screaming, they came after him now, mobbing him, pinning him by sheer numbers.
There was enough of the shock left in him that the first one could be felled by lightening. Second and third in a diagonal blow and he stepped into the space left by their falling bodies. Boots crunched on bones as he spun to hack the head off a fourth, and then he pushed them away so he could slice out of the air the arrows of the three in the trees.
They closed again. A blade coloured like infection sawed across his ribs, but he felt nothing. Whiteness and calm filled his head, and this became only poetry, in which there was no hatred at all. There was a rightness to every slice - to every limb broken and head crushed or severed. It didn't matter, after all, that his strength was waning and he was going to die. Why should it matter?
Abandoned though he was to the pure surrender of battle, he didn't miss the fact that the archers had suddenly ceased, or the press of bodies lessened, but for a moment it wasn't possible to see what was the cause.
That also didn't matter. Only this cut, this block, this breath, this pain. At last he turned and there was no enemy left. A great stillness was on him as he thumbed his sabre off, clipped it to his belt and turned to face the being who had come to his rescue.
It was crouched, cleaning the blades of two long knives on a tussock of grass. Both the knives and the hands which held them glowed with faint light even in the brightness of this world's ivory moon.
He had never seen a creature before that had made him feel so inadequate with such ease. The Force was so strong with it that it spilled from the humanoid form like light through glass. When it looked up... when he looked up - for as beautiful as he was there was nothing feminine about him - Qui-Gon was thankful he'd never been a vain man; or he would have been crushed.
"Mae govannen." The voice was apiece with the rest of him - only superficially human, and Qui-Gon began to wonder if he was encountering an entirely different order of being to the creatures he was accustomed to.
Diplomacy was the same no matter which dimension you were in, though. He clasped his hands and bowed. "I don't speak your language. But thank you for saving my life."
"You descended from the sky in a boat of flames." Legolas could not prevent the shock and awe from colouring his words, "What are you?"
The creature looked like a Man. Of the wrong colouring to be Numenorian - his hair oak-brown rather than jet - he was yet tall enough, and had a similar presence. His speech was a Westron so ancient it might almost have been the awakening tongue of Men. A barbarous language, though the voice which spoke it was pleasant enough.
"I am..." The stranger paused, his dawn-blue eyes unfocusing, as if an invisible companion had whispered in his ear, "A traveller among the stars."
It was exciting to meet something new in the world, Legolas thought - it made him feel almost young again - but however hot his curiosity burned, they should not linger on the doorstep of an orcs' nest. "We must leave this place, Arangil. Follow me, if you can."
Without thought he leapt back onto a tree limb high above their heads. The Man gave him a quizzical look, half humorous, half surprised, and made no movement after him. Is he testing me, or I him? Legolas found the uncertainty intriguing, and Arangil's look of mild challenge spurred him to turn his back and run lightly away through the interlocking boughs.
He fully expected to have to double back and rescue the poor, abandoned Mortal. So it stopped his breath for a moment when the man caught up with him, running beneath him on the ground. No Man could go so noiselessly or so swift. And surely no Man could have followed Legolas in the darkness, when his shape wove through the patterns of leaves as gently as sifting moonlight.
The star traveller ran like a wolf. Legolas saw how moment by moment he seemed more at home in the world, how the living things of the land accepted and aided him, moving out of his way as they would for an elf. What was he?
They ran through the night and saw no more sign of peril. At last the sky lightened to misty grey above them and dawn's bitter chill lay on the land. "Arangil!" Legolas called down, "The sun rises. Let us find a place to talk."
Birds piped and whistled around them, their song only a counterpoint to the empty land's profound silence. The rising sun gilded a small lawn, full of tumbled rocks, yellow with crowsfoot and daisys. Water, red with iron, rose from a spring in the centre of it, surrounded by ruinous walls. Here and there, under the green turf, the bulks of old overgrown masonry raised strange shapes to the morning light, but the stones did not now remember the peoples who had shaped them.
Legolas turned from contemplating the forgotten land to find his guest collecting firewood. He watched the process silently, only leaping down from his bough to watch as Arangil drew his sword of verdant light and used it to kindle the blaze.
If he was not careful he would shame himself with his curiosity. He bit back the thousands of questions. "I need no fire."
The Man smiled at him quietly, "But I do." He put the first large log on top of the kindling - the growing yellow light illuminating the hard planes of his face, showing the flaws of age, the silver in the thick mane of his hair - and looked back with equal fascination. "What is it you called me?"
"Arangil." Now the fire was lit Legolas drew near to it for comfort. How fitting it was; another mortal thing, bright only because it consumed itself. "It means 'noble star traveller'. Or, if you like, 'star lord.'"
"Would it have been rude of me to give my name?"
"Foolish, certainly. Chance acquaintances in the Wild do not do such things."
"Ah." Arangil nodded to himself, as if he now understood something which had been unclear. Searching in memory, Legolas realised that on their meeting the man had been about to name himself, but that his invisible companion had prevented him. The companion then was the Lord, and this man only a servant.
"So it would be foolish of me to ask you your name?" The gleam of amusement in those narrowed eyes was a challenge to which Legolas felt his mouth quirk in response.
"No," he countered, surprisingly at ease with this alien, "That would be rude."
tbc
