Thus Spoke the Seer by StarSpray

Chapter 1

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It came in fragments, glimpses, shades of grey. There was a wide land under a growing shadow as darkness rose like a wave—like the wave that had crushed Númenor, that she dreamed of so often—like great dark wings of some fell creature, like the darkness was a thing in itself and not merely the absence of light.

There was also a dark stone atop a hill, mountains stretching up behind it. About it gathered a great host, and they knelt before a king that bore a winged crown.

There was the host hidden in the mountains, shrinking, fading, forgotten but unable to rest, craven oath breakers lingering in the shadows as the years whirled by.

There was the sound of a horn echoing in in the hills.

There was fire on the river and a white city burning, and the sounds of horses in the night, hooves like drumbeats, passing out of the north.

.

She woke to bright golden sunshine streaming through her window, making the tapestries on her walls glow with luminous color, reds and golds and green. She sat up, breathing deeply to slow the pounding of her heart, before going to the window to push open the casing. It had rained the night before, and the garden shimmered with moisture, like the world had been washed clean. She could see the open windows of the kitchen from where she stood, and heard the cooks singing a baking song for the day's bread.

But every time she blinked she glimpsed that darkness growing and growing—not in the north, in Angmar, but far to the east. It needed words, this vision, words that would not be forgotten when the North Kingdom crumbled. She turned away from the window, closing her eyes again—and again the images flashed through her mind, but less frightening now that she had seen them before. And in them now she could perceive a glimmer of hope.

Later, before Arvedui and Fíriel and their court, Malbeth the Seer spoke: Over the land there lies a long shadow…