A Web of Stars by Idrils Scribe

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Chapter 9

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Arwen climbed to the topmost branch of the sheltering oak and raised her head above the canopy to see the summer morning paint the Greenwood with gold.

A cloud of purple butterflies fluttered about her, of a kind she had never seen before in Imladris or Lórien. Their wings were iridescent, a delicate richness of colour that leapt and changed with each wingstroke. When she called, one landed on her finger, flapping its shimmering wings, and she laughed out loud with the pure joy of discovery.

She looked south first, to the hill of stone towering over the forest. The halls of Amon Lanc had become a smoke-wreathed carcass, but when she strained her eyes she could make out small, dark figures moving about it. These were not spiders: they moved with Elvish grace. If one of Thranduil’s patrols had reached the burning keep already, that meant they had to be in the area — Legolas and she had not been as alone as she had believed.    

To the west, nestled between the mountains and Anduin’s silver ribbon, the green towers of Caras Galadhon shimmered in the morning light. Galadhren lookouts must have spotted the fire from their high perches in the city’s topmost flets. Both King Amroth and Galadriel had probably been raised from their beds to climb up and see the blaze with their own eyes. She wondered what they would make of it — would her grandmother be angry? Arwen winced. Her future held some highly uncomfortable conversations. 

As Arwen swayed with the tree’s branches, rocked gently by the west wind, she realised that in all her life she had never been this free, or this unmoored. Never before had she made a decision with real consequences. 

Amon Lanc lay in ruin, her eyebrows were singed, the woodland prince was wounded but thoroughly satisfied, and her body ached pleasantly after last night’s pleasures. All of it was her doing. She found she rather liked the sense of accomplishment. 

This day was a crossroads, a delicate tangle of possibilities and paths branching forward. Some would bring her from the watchful eyes and guiding hands of her own family into another one just like it, kept and cosseted.

She would choose differently.

Legolas sat below her with his back against the tree, cradling his injured arm. He gave a little wave as she climbed down. 

She had wanted to tell him that the Wood-elves had reached Amon Lanc, but suddenly all she desired was for this private idyll to last as long as possible. “What do you call those purple butterflies?” she asked him instead, pointing at the canopy. “We do not have them in Imladris.”

“They are forest dwellers,” Legolas said, smiling. “We call them purple emperors. Their lives are short — but a few weeks in high summer, but how fair they are! I love how they shimmer.”

Arwen thought for a moment. “Their iridescence is interesting, like opal, but subtler. Could you not gather them when they die in autumn, and make their wings into a brooch?”

Legolas shook his head, baffled by the very idea. “They turn drab upon dying.” He smiled once more, smitten with his woodland creatures. “We must climb up to watch the emperors in the summertime, while they are alive. I fear I shall miss them this year.” He held up his injured hand, but he was laughing. 

Legolas rose and poured her water from his pack, and Arwen tasted soot as she sipped it. 

“There are Elves at the keep,” she remarked. “I saw them in the distance.”

Legolas smiled. “We should pay them a visit. We have not taken our trophies yet.”

 

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The forest around Amon Lanc seemed less gloomy now that the spiders were dead. Morning sunlight streamed down between the whispering spruces in long beams of honey and lemon-yellow. The merry hammering of a woodpecker rang through the silent woods. 

The fire had burned an ugly scar into the dry summer forest. Arwen and Legolas rode among charred stumps long before they reached the hill. Cinders cracked underfoot, and in places wisps of smoke still curled from the smouldering soil. 

Arwen stopped to examine a scorched spider corpse. The heat had twisted the creature’s limbs into grotesque poses, like some monstrous, horse-sized children’s toy. The carcass stank of burned meat and an alien, sweetish smell. Bile rose in her throat. She swallowed as her stomach roiled, thinking that she might never be hungry again. 

She had never seen any living thing charred like this before. She ran her fingers over the devastation that was once the spider’s eye, and wondered how a person might look.

Did Elrohir feel this horror, when he spoke of burning piles of Orcs? Arwen sometimes overheard him talking in hushed tones with Elrond or Celebrían, always dropping the subject when Arwen approached. Elrohir seemed tense as a bowstring when he returned from those patrols. She might have been kinder to him, less abrasive and more understanding. She would, from now on. 

Legolas interrupted her thoughts, hunting dagger in hand. This might be his first time, too, but he was not about to let it show. Despite his wound he sawed into the creature’s face with abandon. Clearly there was a score being settled here. 

“Here are the mandibles,” he explained as one after the other the fearsome fangs came loose and dropped to the ground, sending up small puffs of flaky ash. Arwen picked one up between thumb and forefinger, carefully turning it this way and that. 

“Still sharp, even after the fire.” She managed to grin like she did this every day. “Impressive.”

Legolas smiled. “How many would you like?”

Arwen drew her own knife from her belt. “As many as I can carry!”

It became a perverted children’s game, darting from one scorched carcass to another between the stumps of burned trees, shouting as they pointed out new and fresher ones, their feet leaving grey footprints in the ankle-deep ash. 

Only when they both had a bag full did they relent, stopping for a drink of water and a laugh at each other’s soot-stained faces.

Legolas pulled her in for a kiss, his mouth eager as he nipped at hers, just as sweet and sharp as last night. The sun had risen high before they finally made for Amon Lanc.

 

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The keep looked like something out of Mordor. The roof was gone, windows turned to black holes into nothing. Charred stone pillars reached to the sky like outstretched fingers on begging hands. And everywhere, filling the lungs was the stench of burned spiders, rotten-sweet and scorched. 

They met the Silvan warriors in what was once the courtyard, but the scene was not what Arwen expected. Instead of mourning, they walked into a feast. A company of Wood-elves filled the air with drums and flutes and the high ululations of Silvan war-songs. The crowd chanted Legolas’ name, reaching out to touch him as he rode past. 

“What is happening?” Arwen asked, overwhelmed by the pounding drums. She had expected a scolding for their disappearance, for the destroyed hall — they had even burned trees ! — but instead Thranduil’s people seemed ecstatic with joy.

Legolas smiled. “We fulfilled a long-held wish last night.” 

Erferil ran out to meet them. Thranduil’s marchwarden wore her green woodland gear, but she seemed less grim when crowned with a circlet of wood sage and red campion. Her scarred face broke open into a wide, joyful smile, and she was clearly, obviously drunk .

“Hail, spider-slayers!” Erferil called out to both of them, holding out a gourd of drink. “You did a brave deed! Legolas, you have earned your warrior’s mark for this!” She turned to Arwen. “You, too, lady, if you wish?”

Arwen imagined returning to Imladris with a warrior’s tattoo. Something outrageously Silvan, like a burling stag or an elk. Some among the more traditional Noldor in Imladris raised eyebrows when Elrohir came home from his fostering in Lórien bearing a perfectly civilised horse. The marring of the Evenstar would spawn endless laments, her skin no longer fair and smooth as Lúthien’s.

An attractive idea, but ultimately meaningless: Arwen had never cared for martial matters. She enjoyed neither the hand-to-hand combat - which she had been made to learn regardless - nor the grander arts of tactics and strategy. Her ambitions lay elsewhere.

“Alas, I am no warrior, nor do I wish to become one,” she replied with a small bow of thanks. “I am a huntress though, and your prince has supplied me well with trophies.”

“Those you shall have,” laughed Erferil, “and our good will and gifts besides!”

The day progressed with many well-wishes and passes of the gourd, and even more drumming and dancing. 

At last the sun set behind the Misty Mountains in a great wrack of colour, painting Celebdil, Caradhras and Fanuidhol scarlet and crimson as fresh-spilled blood as the first stars bloomed silver in the east. 

Arwen had lost track of Legolas amidst the revellers. She found him high upon the battlements, looking south towards Mordor. In the courtyard below surged the wild drums of a leaping dance, joined by many voices raised in song and laughter, but Legolas stood silent and alone, his shoulders tense. His hands clung to the scorched remains of the parapet, heedless of the soot. 

She did not speak but stood at his elbow, her shoulder against his, and watched. Beyond the southern Greenwood’s tangled tapestry of trees stretched the Brown Lands, bare downs of withered grass where cold eastern winds drove choking whorls of dust into the air. The Black Hand blighted that once living land beyond healing. 

Further south loomed Emyn Muil, but Legolas' eyes looked past that strange and twisted knot of hills, grinning like broken teeth in the waning light. 

Arwen winced: beyond Emyn Muil lay the Dead Marshes. 

She knew those lands, as did all who lived in Imladris. Gilt-edged maps of Dagorlad hung upon the library walls. The Hall of Fire heard a thousand songs about the Siege of Mordor, fire light playing across the stern faces of ancient warriors as they plunged into remembrance. Gil-galad’s great banner and his blackened armour stood in the armoury as tangible history lessons for the young. Arwen had been a mere child, but she would never forget that bleak look of remembered horror on Elrond’s face when he first told her the tale of the Last Alliance. 

The High Elves had lost their king. So did the Greenwood, but Oropher’s people perished with him.  

“Have you ever seen the Dead Marshes?” Legolas asked, his gaze and his mind miles away.

“No,” she replied, “but I have heard songs. A dark place. Have you ever been there?”

He nodded, swallowed around something heavy. “My father took me once. We saw the faces in the water.”

Legolas, too, had a burden of terrible history pressing down on him since the day he was born. Arwen could only feel sympathy.

“Some say that they are not truly there, our friends and kin,” Legolas said. “That the dead faces are but memories, the horror of the Dagorlad inscribing itself on the land.”

“That is also what our loremasters say.” Arwen was glad to offer him this one small comfort. “Sauron has not the power to keep the dead from Mandos.” 

Her words were meant as a kindness, but he received them like a draught of vinegar. “Mandos is not for Silvans. Greenwood Elves belong in the Greenwood.”

But a few days ago, Arwen would have scoffed at  such blasphemy. Now, she turned away from him to face the courtyard below, lest he see the doubts in her eyes. 

Erfaril was singing to the beat of a deerskin drum amidst a throng of dancers. Power thrummed beneath her Song, a leaping, exultant shout of joy and defiance against the Darkness. 

This dance was ancient as Cuivienen, a wild revelry from the depths of time, wholly free of the cultured restraint of the West. The dancers threw leaping shadows against the keep’s walls in the golden firelight as they took long, elegant jumps over the flames, each more daring than the last, greeted with great merriment and uproar. 

The very walls of Amon Lanc drank in Erferil’s Song. Already, moss and lichen were sprouting on the blackened stone as life took hold once more. Now, at last Arwen understood Legolas’ esteem for the scarred huntress: here stood one of the great Singers of the Lindar, and by those arts did Thranduil keep the darkness at bay.

As Arwen looked upon Legolas’ feasting people, she realised that truth was a many-faceted thing. When Erestor waxed about the blessed light of Valinor and the rightness of Mandos, he was right. But Erferil might sing of the woods and the blessed spirits sheltered beneath its boughs, and she, too, had the right of it when viewed a certain way.

Arwen and Legolas had this in common, at least: they were both children of two worlds, forever straddling the divide, building bridges and breaking them with every word and deed. 

She slipped her hand into Legolas’. He held it tightly, his palm warm against her own. Together they stood, and watched as the stars opened in the darkening sky. 

The moon had risen when a swarm of black birds swooped in from the north to whirl above the keep, a scatter of holes in the starlit expanse.

“Are those crebain ?” Arwen asked with alarm, recalling stories of Sauron’s twisted mockery of crows.

Legolas shook his head and smiled a bright, genuine smile, a pale streak in the layer of soot on his skin. “They are just daws. Message-carriers. My father must be getting anxious.”

The day’s joy leached from his gaze, and he grew nervous. “We should go home. Father will be livid, and being kept waiting in your grandfather’s company will not improve his temper.”