95 Years Ago
The silence.
The silence was remarkable.
The Dungeons were never silent. Ever. The cacophony was endless...the sounds of the forge and the drums and the orcs and the screaming. After a time she had become used to the noise.
Silence however...was startling and unsettling and in a strange way, terrifying.
It was the first time in nearly 5 years the she-elf had heard silence...and she was not sure she liked it.
Slowly she rose...filthy grey rags wrapped tightly around her slim, hard form, hiding flesh of a deathly pallor, liberally darkened with an ever-changing vista of purple and brown bruises.
The darkness.
The darkness is what she noticed next.
The braziers had gone out, which means that the slaves who tended them were elsewhere or dead.
Her fear was growing now.
She drew one rough hand over her shaved scalp and peered into the gloom, even her elven eyes struggling to make out shapes in the unnatural shadow of the dungeons. What was going on?
The whispers.
The lack of the whispers struck her next and she nearly wept from the shock.
His voice was gone. It wasn't in the back of her mind...berating, exhorting, reminding her that everything she once believed was just a lie. That life and love and light were all just illusions that had been drawn over her eyes by the cruel machinations of those who pretended to care. That she was now as she always was and always would be...alone and abandoned, like the refuse she truly was.
For the first time since the gates of Isengard closed behind her, his voice was silent...and she was finally seized with mind numbing terror. His voice had been with her through Isengard and then as she was dragged here, to Dungeons far beneath the hills of Dunland. She would have hidden save that the fact that there was nowhere to hide had been drummed into her head, day after day after day.
There was nowhere for the likes of her to hide.
Instead she gripped the bars of her cell and stared into the darkness...for a moment she thought she could see a small light far down the passage of cells that she now occupied alone. Yes..a torch, coming closer. It must be Urlok...or Karsh. Please Elbereth let it not be Shisak.
The single light bobbed closer, passing one cell after another. She knew them each by the names of those they had once contained. Alec. Stephen. Doric. Lars. Savannah. Caryn. Tharil. Silisia. So many more. All dead now. All dead and gone. One by one. Broken and discarded to be replaced by another who would then be broken and discarded.
Only the she-elf remained. She always remained.
Yet still that light approached, in utter silence. It could not be Urlok, it moved too quickly for the old troll...but too slowly for the eager Karsh. And if it were Shisak he would already be calling to her, rattling the chains of his flail to breed more of the terror that brought him pleasure.
No, this was some other orc. But who...and why? One of the Hillman overseers perhaps, come to give her new labors? Perhaps Toft of the Flesh Pit, come to see if a she-elf could breed half-orcs after all, as the captives from the wild man villages could? No, the wizard had forbidden such experiments...perhaps his mind had been changed?.
The torch came closer now...and it was no Orc. It was not even a hillman. It was dressed all in grey and stank of manflesh, but not Dunland manflesh. And it was speaking...in the common tongue....it was speaking to her.
It took the she-elf long minutes to remember the common tongue, her mind kept translating it to Sindaran or Orcish.
The grey man held the torch up to the bars. "There you are...that Uruk bastard said there was a she-elf still captive up here in the abandoned hole. Mae Govannan."
The she-elf just stared. An awkward silence dragged out. The grey man looked away, unsure how to proceed and unable to look at her bare skull and haunted eyes anymore.
"I..well...we...are seeking someone. A member of our company. A man called Gernad, looked a bit like me I imagine. The signs we could find told us he would have been caged up in this hole by the Orcs."
The she-elf nodded slowly...her mouth trying to assemble words slowly...at first they were only in Orcish and the grey man's face filled with disgust...but slowly she found the common tongue. "Gernad. Ger. Red Hair. Broken nose. Escaped."
The grey man looked deeply relieved. "Excellent, that is a great bit of news at last...how long ago did he find his way out of this wretched place."
The she-elf thought hard. "A year past..perhaps more...maybe less"
"That long ago?" The grey man rubbed his short beard, confused. "Why did he not come to speak to our captain?"
The she-elf pointed out the bars and down the long cave. "His bones lay there...they remain. He escaped."
The grey man gasped, seeming to almost shake for a moment...and a tear ran down his cheek, quickly wiped away. "So...so he is dead then...I had always feared it, but...my brother is dead. Did he die well, at least?"
The she-elf met the ranger's gaze and his hopeful question, her eyes flat and dark.
"No. No one dies well. They just die."
The ranger struggled to compose himself..."And what of you...how...I mean...how did you come here...who are you? We have little time before the distraction of my compatriots ends and the filth return in force."
The she-elf considered...unsure how to answer for a moment. "I am....I am...Lethril....and I do not know how long I have been here. I...no. I do not know."
"Leth....ril" The ranger repeated the name slowly, his Sindarin rusty. "Spy...or Eavesdropper I think? That is a strange name..."
The elf said nothing...remembering fragments of another voice saying Lethril. A soft, elven voice...affectionate. "OH Lethril...my dear one...you must stop moving so silently, we never know where you may be. Truly we have named you well, you scamp..."
The ranger looked up suddenly as the sound of a nightbird echoed incongruously through the dungeon. "That is is the signal...we have no more time. I will snap this lock and have you out of there..."
Lethril quailed back from the bars and covered her face as the ancient metal snapped...."NO! NO!" In her panic at the possibility of freedom, another voice overwhelmed her...a woman but younger, stronger than the first...a woman screaming. "Rian!!! RIAN!!!!! LETHRIL!!!!"
The she-elf looked up and swallowed hard...feeling the screaming woman take her hand and lead her forward. She followed the ranger in silence, past the butchered corpses of several orcs that until today been her tormenters, the harsh woman's voice stil in her head..."Move Rian...Move your bony Arse!!!"...each step causing the fear to diminish, but causing a question to rise in the back of her mind. Where was the whisper? Why had he gone silent? "Who fecking CARES?" the voice screamed. "MOVE!"
A long walk...the silence and darkness growing less oppressive, the air growing sweeter...through a heavy iron door she had never seen open before..and the harsh sunlight of Dunland struck her. Lethril screamed and covered her eyes...falling to her knees. She felt people around her, secretive voices...and looking up she was surrounded by men dressed in grey. She whimpered and tried to crawl backwards, only to be blocked by another.
One of them stepped forward and addressed the one who had brought her out of the Dungeon. "Gemniphred...where is your brother...and who is this?"
The man looked away. "Gernad is...he did not survive...but he is at peace, I hope. This is another captive..she says her name is Lehtril."
The captain nodded and looked closely at the bald, shivering she-elf, as she slowly gained control of herself, still squinting in the light. "We will have time to mourn soon enough...but this one? She looks half dead though we cannot tarry here...bring her and we will withdraw to camp. We can sort out what to make of her then."
The men swung silently up onto horses that had been hidden along the tree line, and the one called Gemniphred held his hand down to her, his voice kindly. "Come...come with us, Lethril. Let us save you."
Slowly...still hearing the woman screaming in the back of her mind, the she-elf took the offered hand as the voice was demanding. "Lethril...." she whispered. "Lethril...no...I am no longer Lethril. As a girl I was Lethril....Now I am...Now I am Xanderian"
The ranger shrugged as she settled her slight, emaciated frame against him..."As you wish...if you are a servant of shadow then the deception is deep indeed. Come..we ride."
As the horse moved effortlessly into the forest, Xanderian looked back, her elf eyes spying the faraway peak of Orthanc...she could feel him there in his aerie, though he had fallen silent. She could feel him watching her, his eye cold and unwavering.
She stared back towards Orthanc, refusing to look away and raised her voice, the sound soft, but gaining strength in the sunlight.
"You shall never own me....again"
