Under Cloud and Under Star by StarSpray

---

Five

---

The raid of the temple had gone better than expected. All of the guards had been sent out to look for Maglor; he would have wagered much that none had thought anyone would dare try to break into a temple of Melkor. They had not reckoned against hobbits. He looked back at Peony, curled up in her blankets by her pony, both of them sound asleep, and only Peony's dark curls were visible sticking out of the blankets.

Limwë came to crouch beside Maglor. Their hair was usually bright red, even brighter than Maedhros' had been beneath Laurelin long ago, but the dirt and grime and blood had darkened it to brown, and in the gloom it seemed black. There were no stars; the air smelled of coming rain. "How did you manage to escape them?" Limwë asked softly. "We thought you'd be well on your way to the Black Land now."

"I would be were it not for Peony." Maglor tilted his head toward her. She shifted and sighed in her sleep.

"Who is she?" Limwë asked. "We thought her a child at first, perhaps one of our own, but she does not carry herself like one."

"No, she is no child. She is a hobbit—I have never met one of her kind before, but she hails from the lands west of the Misty Mountains."

"And she rescued you?" Limwë sounded doubtful.

"She walks as quietly as any elf," said Maglor, "and is handy with locks. But I can say little more, as we only met yesterday."

"Then you do not know what has become of the rest of our people?" Limwë said, wary and weary but still with a glimmer of hope. They sighed when Maglor shook his head. "I fear they were slain rather than taken."

"Some may have escaped," said Maglor. "I called up the rainstorm—"

"Was that you?"

"Yes. It may have been a mistake."

"It washed away the filth of their enchantments, if nothing else," said Limwë.

When morning came the clouds still hung low and threatening, and the land was swarming with soldiers. Maglor retreated farther into the cave and sung a song of hiding and of safety so that the searchers would pass by without even realizing there was a cave there.

But it would be days, perhaps, before they were all recovered enough and it was safe to leave, and they needed food and water. Peony volunteered immediately to go foraging. "All hobbits become very good at foraging for roots and berries and such things in our tweens," she said, as though Maglor had any idea of what that meant. "And of cooking over an open fire, though of course we can't do that until we're well away and safe. But I'll bring back any mushrooms I find anyway—waste not, want not, as my grandmother loves to say! Only do make sure I don't fall for your magic, Maglor, and can't find the cave again."

"I will come out and fetch you if you need it," Maglor promised, amused and somehow deeply reassured by her chatter. "But be careful! The servants of the Eye are not blind."

"Neither are you," said Peony with a bright grin, "and you didn't notice me at all until I was right before you." And with that she pulled her hood up over her curls and disappeared into the undergrowth as quickly and quietly as a rabbit might with hardly a rustle of a single leaf.

"She is a brave little thing," remarked Gêl from where he lay in the back of the cave. He had been the worst treated of the four Maglor had found in the temple, though no one really knew why, as he had not been particularly defiant, nor was he anyone of particular importance in the clan. Limwë was older and more powerful, and they had been more or less left alone. "What was she saying?"

"The…youth…of her people are accustomed to foraging and cooking in the wild, it seems," Maglor said. "And she told me yesterday that they live in holes in the ground, and plant gardens atop them."

"What a strange little people," remarked Silivren, where she sat beside Gêl. They fell silent as voices and heavy boots drew close to the cave. Maglor stood near the entrance, but the soldiers, all bearing the red sigil of Mordor, passed by without so much as a glance at it. They passed through the same bushes that Peony had, but though he strained to hear, there was no triumphant shout or sound of a struggle or scuffle.

Peony returned after several hours with a bulging satchel and several full water skins—these she had not had when she left, nor the pair of feed bags for Apple. "Well the soldiers don't need them, do they?" she said when Maglor raised his eyebrows. "They can just go home and get more. Anyway, now everyone has their own water, and I can go back to the stream easily enough, it's just past those brambles there. And while I was getting them, I thought I'd get some of their food, too. They're all Men, so it's good to eat, at least, and it's all stuff meant to be eaten on the road. I found a good deal of berries, too, but anything else would need to be cooked, unless you Elves like chewing on tough roots."

"They will know that someone is in these hills when they discover all of this missing," Silivren said as Peony unpacked her satchel.

Maglor repeated this for Peony. "Oh," she said, and frowned. "I hadn't thought of that."

"Too late now," said Maglor as he took one of the water skins. His throat was very dry. "Maybe they won't notice until too late."

The rain began that afternoon. It was another three days before the search ended and the soldiers ceased crawling over the hills like ants, and a fourth before the rain passed on, south and east toward the great inland Sea of Rhûn. More than once they were nearly caught, when Maglor's enchantments faltered with his weariness or when they had to slip out of the cave to take Apple to drink, or for other necessities. But at last Maglor slipped out and found the hills quiet, and nothing rustling through the brush but the wind and a few small beasts. They left the cave as the sun vanished over the horizon and Gil-Estel rose glimmering in the east. Maglor stepped outside and gazed at it for a moment, as was his custom on evenings when it appeared, and then gestured for the others to follow. Using the stars and keeping well away from the road, he led them back to the north and east.

There was no question of whether they would remain in the wood after they came back. They could not. They could only see what remained of their homes and belongings and people. The question before the soldiers had come had been who would go east and who would go west. Those with Maglor and Peony now had been in the camp desiring to pass westward and out of Middle-earth.

Peony sometimes walked and sometimes rode her pony, depending upon the terrain. She was as quiet as the elves, and even Apple seemed unusually stealthy for a pony. Once they were well away from the temple site and the road used by the soldiers, it was deemed safe to make small fires at night for cooking and for warmth, for though the days were warm the nights were chilled. Peony immediately took charge of all of their meals, and though her methods and the results were strange to Maglor and stranger to his companions, they were quite good. She also took it upon herself to start learning the Elvish tongue that Limwë and the others used, and to teach them a bit of the Common Speech that she spoke. They learned faster than she did, much to her surprise and to Maglor's amusement.

They came to a small river and stayed an extra day so that they could all wash the grime and old blood off their skin and out of their hair. Limwë and Gêl were particularly transformed, with Limwë's bright red hair and Gêl's pale silver. They cleaned what remained of their clothes, too, as best they could, and lay them out to dry in the sun. While the Elves bathed, Apple grazed on the bank and Peony went upstream a little ways to try her luck at fishing while a pan full of mushrooms she had discovered the day before stewed gently over the fire. Her delight in such finds never diminished. As for Maglor, he was grateful for the food but also was not sure why Peony loved the things so much.

As he sat by the fire and allowed Hethwes to braid his hair, Peony returned in triumph, with three large fishes in her hand. Silivren and Limwë immediately took them from her to prepare them for cooking. "Let us have a turn at meal making," Silivren laughed when Peony protested. "You are very skilled, but we are not so helpless. Have a rest and wash yourself."

"And when you return, Maglor will give us a song," Limwë added.

"Will I?" Maglor asked as Peony skipped off to the river bank.

"As though you've ever turned down a willing audience!"

Maglor smiled, but remained quiet until Peony returned, hair dripping, to sit beside him on the grass. "What would you like me to sing, then?" he asked them all.

"One of the old songs," said Hethwes immediately. "The stars will come out soon."

Maglor nodded. The old songs, the ones that had the strongest ties still to those sung by the dark waters of Cuiviénen, were not meant to be accompanied by harps or flutes or even drums, which was just as well, for Maglor had no instruments. As the sky darkened and the fish began to sizzle on the hot stones set in the fire, Maglor tilted his head back and began to sing. It was a song of greeting and praise to the stars, so old that Varda Elentári had been unknown to the first singers. Such songs had still been sung by the Vanyar in the mountains when Maglor had been young, and he had been strangely comforted to find them again here in the east.

He sang other songs that night, too, tales from the eastern clans, of elven heroes and great deeds that had never been heard in the lands west of Rhûn. Peony listened attentively before she drifted off to sleep.

Maglor took first watch that night, retreating from the warmth and light of the fire to gaze into the darkness. They were far from roads and from villages, but he no longer trusted the night shadows, and he had not forgotten the ring. Maglor knew almost nothing of Ring-lore, only the rhyme that named the Three, Seven, Nine, and One. Whether these new rings were comparable to those made in Eregion, he could not tell. But the fact that Sauron had returned to ring-making troubled him deeply. As he gazed into the night and listened for anything that was not the flow of water or the normal sounds of the woodlands, he thought of the man wearing the ring and of the tales he'd heard of the Nine, and wondered if that man knew what fate awaited him.

Maglor let the others rest through the night, and shrugged off Silivren's scolding when he roused them at dawn. The sky was muted with haze that day, and it promised to be hot. The wind had changed, bringing the smell of wood smoke with it. Maglor did not like it, and exchanged a worried frown with Limwë.

"Is it much farther?" Peony asked as she hoisted herself into her saddle.

"Not far," said Hethwes. She pointed to the horizon, where the dark line of trees of the great wood where the elves dwelled could be seen. "Just there. Perhaps another day or two of walking."

Peony squinted, shading her eyes with one hand. "It's too hazy," she said. "I suppose there's a bit of a dark smudge there…but you elves can see marvelous far."

Hethwes' reckoning had been correct, and it took another day and a half to reach the forest. They had to cross open grasslands, and once they saw a small group of horsemen in the distance. But either the horsemen did not see them, or they were not scouts of the Enemy, for nothing came of it. Still Maglor felt uneasy, and the feeling only grew as they approached the wood and saw that the darkness did not come from the thick greenery. The rain that Maglor had called had saved a portion of the forest, but the dry weather afterward had wicked away the water and much of it had burned, or been hacked down—and that was orc-work, not Mannish. Trees lay hacked to piece or burnt or both, or still stood as blackened and grey husks of themselves. The air was thick with the smell of burning, and the smoke stung Maglor's throat and nose, but beneath it there was also the smell of death. It seemed wrong to stand before the place beneath a clear blue sky. All was silent; not even the wind passed through the dead wood, and there was no sign of either bird or animal. "Ai!" cried Gêl, stumbling as they approached. "What have they done?"

"Worse than I feared," Limwë whispered. They stood beside Maglor as Silivren and Hethwes rushed forward, crying out for the trees that they had known and loved, and also for friends and family who they had hoped to find there—but now hoped not to find. "Do you think any survived this?"

"If they fled," said Maglor. "Perhaps it was foolish to return."

"Someone must find and care for the dead," Limwë replied. They went to help Gêl to his feet so that they could go together into the wood.

Maglor looked at Peony, who stared at the ruined forest solemnly. "You do not need to come into this place with us," he said.

"I'm not staying out here," she said. "You have your work cut out for you, it seems to me, and I want to help." Her chin had that stubborn set to it again, and she met Maglor's gaze unflinchingly. So he only nodded, and led her through the now-broken path into the wood.