Whispers In The Stream by just_jenni

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Chapter 4-The Desolation of Autumn

WARNINGS: CHARACTER DEATH, SOME GRUESOMENESS, MORE POLITICAL ISSUES INVOLVED.

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Haleth sat in the shallow waters of the stream, her hands pressed beside her into the muddy bottom. She was looking up at the sky. Grey clouds in the distance, trimmed in purple hues, looked to be moving closer. They would bring with them the first snows of the new season.

It was then that Haleth realized her lower body and hands were cold, freezing cold. Her hands felt like lumps of snow, big and puffy. She shivered and looked down. Red clouds of blood billowed out around her body, and their circumference was wider now than it had been an hour ago when she had waded into the water, limping on fragile feet and sat down.

Orithil’s potion had not worked. After taking it two months before, Haleth had given it time to take effect, but nothing had happened. Finally, she had decided to try to cause a miscarriage by using a sharp instrument, and though she had tried to be careful, it had caused her to hemorrhage, and she had much pain with it.

She sat and looked down into the water. She thought she could hear a voice calling to her but she could not see anything except the red clouds, making the water murky. She tried to stand but she found she was unable to move her legs—they were too weak. So she laid her head back in the water, letting it float for a while on the surface, and she tried to listen harder to the voice.

“Mother,” the faint voice spoke. It sounded like a little girl. “Mother, please don’t leave me. I need you. Please stay here and help me.” Haleth sighed with regret but she felt numb.

After awhile her eyes closed and her face sank below the surface of the stream. Her arms were folded over her belly.

~ ~ ~

Caranthir had returned from his trip to Lake Helevorn a few days early. The vein of gold had been sound, and miners had been dispatched to work on the excavation. The capable Dwarves were left in charge of the project, everyone happy with the promise of the new riches that had been discovered.

Caranthir was especially pleased because this promise of new wealth would allow him to establish a community of houses for Haleth’s people in Thargelion. He planned to set them up in trades that would be beneficial to all that lived there. He could not wait to get home and surprise his love with his idea.

But when he reached his home and found that Haleth was gone, he was extremely upset at this news and turned his rage on Orithil. Furious, he paced around the room in his tall black leather boots, their heels clacking on the polished wood floors beneath them, and he raised his voice to her.

“What do you mean, Orithil, that she is gone?” he demanded, his deep voice creating a cacophony when combined with the striking sound of his boot-heels.

“She told me, My Lord, that she needed to take her people as quickly as possible to Dorthonion before the winter set in, or it would be too late.” Orithil’s voice was quavering, and she sat at the dining table, watching her master become angrier, his pacing becoming quicker as his anger grew.

His legs, encased in tight-fitting black leggings, were a blur before her eyes. When he turned, his steely grey eyes flashed sparks at her.

“Is she planning to come back?” he asked.

“What, My Lord?” she asked, her voice trembling.

He stopped walking, placed both palms on the table-top and bent his steely gaze towards her. His knuckles were white.

“Is it her plan to lead her people to Dorthonion and then return to us here?”

“I—I cannot say, My Lord.” Orithil’s voice was shaking as much as her hands. She tried to steady them by placing them in her lap.

“You cannot say or you do not intend to say because you made her a promise not to?” he asked, his voice becoming a little quieter, but cold as ice.

“My Lord, I am so sorry.” Orithil burst into tears. “I cannot tell you that which I promised her I would not.”

Caranthir hurried around the edge of the table to Orithil’s side. He fell to his knees, took one of her hands in his and held it to his lips. With the warmth of his breath and the touch of his trembling mouth against the back of her hand, he entreated her with his tear-filled grey eyes, their lashes beaded with tears. His voice was a soft whisper when he spoke.

“Let me just tell you this, Orithil,” he said. “I love Lady Haleth with all my heart, more than I have ever loved anyone. I cannot lose her, Orithil. You need not tell me any of her secrets. Allow me the privilege of hearing them myself, from her own lips, when I find her. Give us the opportunity to know each other—to find out every secret, dark, silly or otherwise—that each of us possesses. Let us find out everything we can about each other. Give us time, Orithil, to do this. In time she will come to know that she loves me in return. How long ago did she leave? Please tell me that, at least.”

Sobbing uncontrollably, Orithil squeezed Caranthir’s hand and with the other she tentatively touched the side of his face. Her fingers became wet with his tears. “One week,” she said. “She was to take them west first and then turn north after crossing the river at Sarn Athrad.”

“Thank you.” Caranthir stood, pulling Orithil up so that he could embrace her. “Do not worry,” he said. “I shall find her and have her back here in a fortnight.”

He left quickly for the stables, ordered his grooms to ready his prized dappled grey stallion, Mithroch, for a long journey, and when the horse was ready, they galloped away in the direction Orithil had given him.

~ ~ ~

Rodyn, Haleth’s second-in-command, came across her in the stream. “Haleth!” he cried upon first sight of her.

When she did not answer, fear crept into him. He waded into the frigid water and pulled her into his arms. He could see that her lips were tinged with blue.

He lifted her out and carried her back to camp. In their tribe there was a healer, an old woman with a perfunctory knowledge of health care, whom Rodyn entreated to examine Haleth and tell him, if she could, what had happened to their leader, and how she came to be in such a terrible predicament.

Rodyn was a young man of twenty—very young to be assuming the responsibility of leadership. But he was physically mature for his years, as well as intelligent and imperturbable. Haleth had chosen the best possible person to be her successor. Rodyn retired to his tent alone and awaited the healer’s verdict.

Removing his outer jerkin and sitting down on his pallet, he wrapped himself in his blanket and uncorked a bottle of fortifying wine, taking a small sip to steady his nerves. He passed a hand through his shock of blond hair, smoothing it away from his forehead, and stroked his mustache. He pondered on Haleth. Her behavior over the past two months had been strange. First, after telling Rodyn that she wanted to leave Thargelion first by way of following the Dwarf Road, she changed her mind after they had started out and told Rodyn that it would be better to travel first north through Thargelion, following the River Gelion. She said she thought the way would be safer if they stayed as long as possible in Caranthir’s territory, and then turn west into Dorthonion by way of the Little Gelion, traveling past Himring.

That was fine; it made no difference to him which way they took, as long as they got there safely in the end. But Haleth’s demeanor had changed. She had been sullen and she was practically unresponsive to everything that he had asked of her. She had become incapable of making decisions on the least little thing, where before she had always been strongly decisive on matters concerning the tribe, except where Caranthir was concerned. Rodyn suspected that some sort of ill will had befallen Haleth and the Elvish lord and that it had caused her unhappiness.

When Rodyn found Haleth in the shallow stream, covered in blood, he suspected that she had tried to take her own life, probably because of what had transpired between her and Caranthir. He vowed that if that were the case, he would return to Thargelion and have words with the lord.

Presently, the healer approached his tent and asked to speak with him.

~ ~ ~

Because of the change in Haleth’s route and the delay caused to the tribe by her indecisive actions, Caranthir did not discover the mortals who were slowly making their way to Doriath along the Gelion river. In fact, the tribe had stopped traveling altogether in order for Rodyn to make his journey back to Caranthir’s home near Sarn Athrad.

Orithil was seated at her kitchen table mending a hem when she heard knocking at her front door. The sound was hollow and it rang in the wintry night like a portent. When she opened it, she saw a tall, blond man with facial hair standing on her doorstep.

“Rodyn,” she said with surprise. She knew him from his association with Haleth, but she never thought she would see him again. Her heart was beating rapidly.

“Yes, madam,” said Rodyn. His manner was abrupt, purposeful, but his voice shook with nervousness. “I have news that I would like to impart to you, but first I must give this news to the lord Caranthir. I wonder if he is home, and if so, if you would accompany me to his house, where I can give you both my news together?”

Orithil held her hand to her throat. “I am sorry, Rodyn, but Lord Caranthir is away at present.” She stared at the young man with wide eyes filled with dread, for he looked deathly pale and stricken.

“Please come in and sit down,” Orithil offered, only just realizing that they stood on the threshold with door open wide, letting the cold winds blow into the cottage. “Can I get you something to eat and drink?”

“Yes, ma’am, I would be thankful for that,” he said, and practically fell down into a chair. “I have been riding for many days, trying to sleep and stop for food as little as possible so that I could reach here in the fastest possible time.”

Orithil set before him a mug of hot tea and poured him a bowl of warm broth, accompanied by a loaf of bread baked that day.

When he began his meal, Orithil asked him, “You have brought news of Lady Haleth, have you not? Have I guessed correctly that is why you have come all this way to see us?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said between sips and bites. “Although my news is not good. I am sorry, but Haleth is dead.”

“Dead?” cried Orithil. “Haleth is dead? Oh no, this is the worst possible news.” She buried her face in her hands and burst into tears.

“Yes. I am sorry to bring news such as this. I know you and she were close. I thought I should come and let you and Lord Caranthir know too, of course.”

“Yes,” sobbed Orithil. “Yes, we were close and Lord Caranthir loved her very much.”

After a few moments of silence in which the only sounds to be heard were those of Orithil’s sobbing and Rodyn’s chewing, the young man cleared his throat and spoke again.

“Would you like to know how she died?” he asked, his eyes a somber grey.

“I have an idea,” cried Orithil, her sobs becoming quieter. “Now there is no more need for secrets. I know she was carrying a child and she meant to rid herself of it. I suppose that something went wrong and Haleth died because of some mishap.”

“That is the strange thing about it,” said Rodyn. “I found her lying in a stream, with blood all around her. She had drowned. Our healer said that she had punctured herself with something sharp, most likely to cause a miscarriage, and had caused herself to hemorrhage.”

“Oh, Ilúvatar, please forgive me!” Orithil’s sobs became louder. “This is all my fault.”

“I don’t understand,” said Rodyn. “How could it be your fault, ma’am?”

“Because I told her how to rid herself of child!” Orithil cried. “I knew of her state, and I should have told him! I should have told Lord Caranthir about it and if I had done so, she may yet be alive today!”

“But ma’am,” said Rodyn, reaching out to touch her arm. “Haleth wasn’t even pregnant.”

~ ~ ~

Orithil sat at her kitchen table, her hands clasped tightly together as if to keep herself from shattering, looking like a statue made of fragile stone.

“My dear,” said her husband, “you have been sitting there for days, waiting for him who never comes. Come and have something to eat and give yourself some strength.”

“No,” she whispered, “I cannot. I wait for him. I wait for my lord Caranthir. I have something that I must tell him.”

She waited many weeks, her husband prying her away from her kitchen vigil to drag her to bed to catch a few hours’ sleep at night. During the day he would try to force-feed her. Orithil grew very thin and her appearance became that of an old woman. She struggled with her grief and the strain showed on her.

Orithil waited a long time, the innumerable days blending into each other, until finally, she heard it—the unmistakable rapping of Caranthir’s boot-heels upon her pathway.

She leapt from her place at the kitchen table and ran to the door, flinging it open. She looked at Caranthir walking up the path. His black hair blew behind him in the bitter wind. A red flush of cold was on his cheeks, and his eyes shone sharply at her like two beacons. He moved with the lithe, predatory grace of a cat.

Orithil’s breath caught in her throat at the sight of him. He looked lost, vulnerable, aching.

“My lord,” she said with faltering voice. “I have something to tell you.”

THE END

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Chapter End Notes

Many, many thanks to Dawn_Felagund for beta reading this long story.  Without her help I don't think I could have finished it.  Your hard work is very much appreciated, Dawn.