Laureanis had lost count of how many times Choileach had hit her since they had been brought into the cave. She had lost her sense of time so she could not tell how long they had been there. Could have been hours, could have been days. She had not broken, she had not wept; she had not screamed. During her captivity in the Iron Prison of Angband six thousand years before she had held out a long time before they had reduced her into a humiliating, sobbing heap of tears and pleads of mercy, stripped of everything but a vague instinct for survival. She tried to remember those decades of captivity now, as she sat chained on the wall of the cave staring at Choileach. There was nothing the one-eyed madman could do to her that had not already been done to her a thousand times over. There was nothing left for him to break anymore.
Delioron was chained to the far wall of the cave, outside of the sphere of light of the bonfire. It was impossible to tell what time of day it was. The cave would have been pitch black without the bonfire. Choileach’s twisted face, horribly disfigured by his former tribesmen as they had plucked out his eye and carved his flesh with a red-hot blade, spoke more eloquently than anything he ever could have said.
”I am not afraid of you”, Laureanis said in a controlled and even voice, replying to a question Choileach had just asked.
”Shut your mouth!” Choileach screamed, punching her again. Both her eyes were blackened and nearly swollen shut. Her face was bruised and almost unrecognizable beneath the swells.
Delioron had not said a word during their captivity. Choileach had questioned him twice along with a big Angmarim named Belzagar. They had yelled at him and danced around him like a pair of demented goblins, spewing curses and threats at him, but he had not spoken. He had not cried out when Belzagar had started beating him. They had stopped after Delioron had lost consciousness.
”We cannot kill him”, Choileach had warned Belzagar. ”We are going to need him later. Sara told me she wants him to be alive for his part.”
A little later six of the dark-cloaked figures – Angmarim, Delioron had thought, because of their accent and because they sometimes spoke Adûnaic in a dialect he had never heard before – had left the cave, leaving only Choileach and Belzagar in the cave with Laureanis and Delioron. One of them had said they were going to a location called ’Bar-e-Therchir’, and Delioron had understood from the way they spoke that they would not be coming back here. An hour ago Belzagar had left the cave as well – to hunt for food – leaving only Choileach to keep company to the captives.
After Belzagar had left, Choileach had concentrated all his hatred towards Laureanis, leaving Delioron unattended. It was like they had both completely forgotten about him, the unseen audience of their gruesome drama in the dark shadows of the cave, just outside the flickering sphere of light.
He had listened in silence and was beginning to understand. Agents from Mordor and Angmar had been sent to the Trollshaws with a conspiracy to assassinate Elrond. Laureanis, working secretly for Elrond, had somehow found out about the conspiracy and managed to penetrate it. But then the conspirators had discovered Laureanis’ betrayal of their scheme and ambushed her in the High Moor. The Angmarim had captured Laureanis and Delioron and taken them into this cave.
They were going to kill Laureanis, and they were going to make it painful, that much he understood. But what did they need him alive for? And who was Sara? Was she the mysterious old hag he had met up in the High Moor earlier? Who was she?
He had only been chained from one hand, his right, onto the wall of the cave. The shackle was tight around his wrist but the chain was pretty long and low on the wall, about three feet above the ground. He had known what he would do from the moment they had chained him there but he had waited patiently for his moment. He had waited for the right time.
”Do you know how we are going to kill you?” Choileach asked Laureanis. ”We’re going to smash your head in with a mace. That’s why I keep hitting you in the face, because it doesn’t matter – you will not look pretty when your corpse is found. You will not look pretty when the elves find the Gondorian next to your body holding a mace, my dear.”
Choileach looked at Delioron across the cave for the first time in an hour, his lone eye gleaming maliciously.
”How do you like that, Gondorian, huh?” he asked. ”Good luck explaining the elves of Rivendell what a Gondorian spy is doing in their forest, next to a mauled corpse of an elf of Rivendell, holding the very weapon that was used to crush her head. Good luck explaining them that! So maybe our plot to kill that wretched elf-lord has failed, there’s no way around it now, but we will not depart here before we have kicked a serious dent in the relationship between the elves and Gondor, such as there was much to begin with. No use waiting for any help from the elves when we attack Gondor, soon, very soon! You’ll see, you’ll see – or maybe not! Maybe the elves will kill you first, ha ha!”
”It’s more than you will see, you one-eyed Nimwaith.”
Choileach screamed with rage, crossed the floor of the cave to Delioron and kicked him. Delioron reached behind his ankle and twisted it. Choileach fell down, hitting his head on the floor. In a moment Delioron had the chain wrapped around Choileach’s neck. Delioron’s knee pressed against Choileach’s back, forcing his neck into the chain.
”Now the keys”, Delioron said.
Choileach reached behind him and found the key chain, dropping it on Delioron. Choileah made gagging noises as Delioron used the keys to unlock his shackle. He stood up and dropped Choileach on the floor. Choileach bared his teeth and hissed like a trapped beast. Delioron crushed his nose with a single downward stroke of his fist. Choileach’s head dropped on the floor and he fell silent.
Delioron picked up a club leaning against the wall, walked over to Laureanis and knelt down to open her shackles. Laureanis rubbed her wrists until blood began to circulate in her hands again. She gazed at Delioron with her blackened eyes, nearly swollen shut. Delioron gave her his hand and lifted her up. She looked around in the dark cave, dimly lit by the bonfire.
”Do you know where we are?” Delioron asked.
”Yes”, she said. ”My people have named this cave Nurath. It’s in Bruinen Gorges, west of the river.”
”Maybe you should sit down for a moment. We have to wait for the Angmarim.”
Delioron went back to Choileach and pulled up his crippled body. He dragged him over to the bonfire and fastened him on the wall with the shackles he had used to bind Laureanis a moment earlier. Delioron ripped a strip of cloth from Choileach’s cloak.
”Open up”, he said.
Choileach bared his teeth, and Delioron shoved the ball of cloth into his mouth.
”When Belzagar returns, I am going to kill him”, Delioron told him quietly, and Choileach’s lone eye grew wide. ”After I’ve killed him, I have some questions for you. If I like your answers, your life will be spared. If I don’t, you will join Belzagar in the afterlife.”
Delioron went to the mouth of the cave and waited on the other side, holding the club in one hand.
”What are you doing?” Laureanis’ voice whispered from the shadows, but Delioron did not reply. His face was ashen and calm as they waited in silence for a long time.
After what felt like an eternity they heard footsteps crunching against the gravel outside. In a moment Belzagar stepped inside, saw Choileach shackled on the wall and froze, unable to comprehend the sight. Delioron stepped from behind the mouth of the cave and swung his club violently against the other man’s nose, driving splinters of bone into his brain. Belzagar was dead before his body crumpled on the floor, the carcass of the deer he had been carrying slumping over him.
Delioron turned, walked over to Choileach and pulled the ball of cloth out of his mouth.
”You killed him”, Choileach said in horror and gagged.
”As I told you I would”, Delioron said in a monotonous voice. ”Now tell me everything.”
”I will not betray Sauron’s…”
”Oh but you will. With pain or without. Trust me.”
Laureanis stared at Choileach from the darkness, seeing the face of the victim she had once been. In that moment she did not feel her own wounds or pain; she felt all the pain of every prisoner in the world.
So now I have become the villain as well, she though. A deceiver, a torturer. A monster. Will it never end?
Delioron struck Choileach on his good eye with the club. The eye turned red and watery. Tears streamed down his cheek and he screamed. There were tears on Laureanis’ eyes as well. She could see his fear and feel his pain and despair. A pity for all the victims of the world welled in her as a pain in her heart. But she said nothing to object.
Delioron hit him in the eye again and blood started to drip into the redness of Choileach’s staring, fearful eye.
”Please”, Choileach begged in tears and pain. ”Please don’t blind me. I have only the one eye left!”
”Tell me”, Delioron said.
And so Choileach told Delioron everything he knew about Sauron’s plot to assassinate Elrond and the subsequent invasion of Imladris.
