The Hands of the Prince by Valxyri

ONE

~
The Fifteenth year of the Fourth Age

Midsummer
~
Life and death hung suspended in balance.
The Prince of the Reunited Kingdoms choked as awareness came back to him out of the void. His head pounded and his ears rang. He tasted dust in his mouth and felt it clogging his eyes and nostrils. The air reeked of blood. He attempted to blink away the debris, but the blackness was so complete that it made no difference if his eyes were open or shut. Sparks danced across his vision, and his shock-numbed senses struggled to make sense of the world suddenly turned upside down. He was held pinned on his back by something soft and still.
Eldarion attempted to move in his confusion, and a spike of piercing agony shot up from his left leg. It was pinned in place and he could feel warm blood seeping into his pants and soaking his tunic. The prince tried to move his hand, and a great cascade of stone rubble fell away from it. There was a heavy slab only a hands breadth from his face.
He coughed, and is breath came more quickly through parched lips as memory returned. They had been in the market, the one on the fifth level of the city with the great carved pillars and the high roof. There was a new caravan down from Erabor, and as the heat of the Summer day had waned, crowds of locals had swarmed the market for a look at the exotic dwarven wares. Everyone enjoyed the royal family’s willingness to mingle with the common folk.
Aragorn seemed to think that these outings were politically important as he had gently reminded his moody teenage son. So, the evening had found King Elessar and a pregnant queen Arwen (and two of her ladies in waiting), along with a heavily armed pair of Peredhel twins who passed his infant sister back and forth between them, wandering through the ornate marketplace, walking from stall to stall at a leisurely pace.
Eldarion was almost at the age when he would realize that he was handsome, but now the looks that the young ladies of the city sent him flew over his head like the gulls that circled the tower of Ecthelion. He had all of the gangly build of his mother’s people and none of the muscle tone and liked to wear his thick mop of black hair hanging over one eye.
The women had lingered behind, Eldarion reminded himself as his heart began to race in fear. His ears were ringing. There was hair in his mouth.
Arwen had struck up a conversation with a clothier about embroidery, and Aragorn had taken the opportunity to whisk his son away to where a dwarven smith had set up his stall further into the great vaulted space.
The smith was a jolly fellow named Tulk who greeted the king graciously with a bow and an unspoken price increase for his royal customers. Eldarion had immediately gravitated to an enormous, two-handed, spiked war hammer on the back wall with a gleaming purple gem set into the pommel. His father had placed a kind hand on his son’s shoulder, laughing as he suggested that the skinny, teenaged prince might need more training before he could wield such a weapon.
There had been an explosion. The last memory that Eldarion could conjure from before he had blacked out had been a terrible boom and the feeling of a concussive blast hitting them as the base of the closest pillar dissolved in fire, the screams of civilians running for their lives and looking up, the high stone roof of the market falling towards him, great slabs of masonry folding inward with a groan.
Aragorn had reacted with battlefield reflexes, tackling his son to the hard marble floor as the boy stood staring in shock. As the building came down around them, he had thrown his arms around his child’s head, using his own body as a shield against the falling rubble.
“Ada?” Eldarion choked on dust. "ADA!" His breath was coming in panicked gasps as the weight on his body seemed to increase. He further explored with his free hand, at first touching only the slab of stone above his face and then, to his horror, feeling the fine dusty cotton of his father’s tunic. He soon found hair. It was matted with dust and blood.
“No... Ada?” He gulped air, trying to shift so that he could touch his father’s face, “Ada!” he called again, his voice going up in pitch with panic. "ADA!" Aragorn did not respond to his son’s voice, even as his cries for his father dissolved into sobs.
"Ada, dad, wake up! Wake up!" he cried. Eldarion told himself to be brave, but the weight of the Earth was pressing down on him, and soon he could feel himself hyperventilating as inarticulate panic set in.
"Wake up! Wake up!" He cried, over and over. Eldarion’s groping fingers found his father’s bloodied face. A spike of terror went through him as he moved his fingers over the lips which had, with tenderness and enthusiasm, kissed his forehead as a small child and sang him to sleep.
He wasn’t breathing.
“No, Eru, no,” Eldarion begged the Lord of the Music as his eyes suddenly burst with tears that slid through the dust at his temples. His searching hand found its way behind his father’s bearded jaw, but his heart was pounding in his own ears, the stale air tasted of limestone, and the only thought that filled his mind was that his father was dead in his arms. He clutched onto him as well as he could in the cramped space, feeling the wave of grief come spilling out of his heart in terrified sobs. He gasped for air but could not fill his lungs.
Was this to be the end of the line of kings? In terror and darkness, struck down by the hand of a nameless coward?
The air reeked of blood and was quickly becoming stale, every panicked breath was less renewing. There was a worrying amount of blood filling Eldarion’s trousers, but he could not see or reach far enough to tell how badly he was injured. Shock and grief, and fear rose like walls around his mind, and he sought out the refuge of his own inner light, fading from reality as his vision filled with dancing fire.
“Ada please…” he wanted to say something, to beg his father not to leave, but his words were swallowed in pained, gasping sobs. Aragorn liked talking about death, there was a schedule, Eldarion had known since he could understand such a thing that his father would leave one day. But not yet, he wasn't ready and he wasn't sure he ever would be.
He knew not from where the sudden rush of courage came upon him. The stories of his father’s healing abilities had been held as legendary since The War, and in a flash of deep knowledge and insight, he heard the voice of a long-dead wise woman echo through his mind, “The hands of a king are the hands of a healer.”
He had watched Elladan and Elrohir pour their living energy into their patients in the halls of healing, heard their stories about his departed grandfather, and had himself felt their healing touch on his childhood injuries. Was he not of the same noble lineage? If his father was gone, then that meant he was king, and the king could save anyone if he tried hard enough. He knew that it was an absurd train of thought, but he clung to his childlike faith as a lifeline. He tried to visualize a bright light pouring into his father’s body from his own. For too many long seconds, nothing happened.
“Ada!” he begged. He was becoming lightheaded, and his breaths did little to clear the sparkling lights from his vision. He laughed in delirium, letting his head fall back and gasping for shallow breaths, “ai Namo,” He mumbled as the flashes of light turned to living stars. A power, deep and vast as time itself seemed to settle between his eyes, it built and built, fueled by love and terror, until, like a piece of glass struck by a single stone, something cracked in the fabric of reality and a player went silent in the orchestra.
"No," he said with an authority that would challenge the Gods, "You can't have him." Eldarion whispered into the void where the music of Death had gone still. Reeling in the chaos that washed across his mind, Eldarion barely heard the hacking breaths as Aragorn choked for air and the prince of Gondor lost consciousness, his energy utterly diminished.
...
Eldarion’s mind resurfaced sometime later to the sound of pickaxes and raised dwarven voices. The air smelled a bit less stale, as if the digging workers had moved something and let air into their little pocket. He could hear his father’s pained breathing, shallow, wet rasps through the dark. He was alive.
Eldarion listened in bewilderment for a moment before he could gather his wits enough to cry out. When he did, his voice was a harsh rasp for want of water, he coughed and forced himself to speak through his raw throat.
“HELP!” he screamed, choking on dust. “HELP! HELP! WERE HERE! WERE ALIVE!”
“Eldarion!” It was one of the twins, his voice coming from directly above them. “Here! DIG HERE I HEAR SOMETHING!” the Peredhel was joined by other shouting voices and the hurried sound of digging and shifting rock.
“Ada?” Eldarion asked again. Touching the bloodied curls under his hand. The broken groan of agony that answered him was like a fist around his heart. “I can hear them digging, Ada!” He was alive. He was responding to Eldarion’s voice, that was good, it had to be good.
“’darion,” Aragorn coughed around a mouthful of blood, “Are you hurt?” he slurred and gasped in pain, squeezing shut his eyes against the darkness and weakly moving as if he would stand.
“Don’t try to move. I can hear them digging,” Eldarion said again, trying to keep his father awake and alert. “Ada. Tell me where you’re hurt... please.”
Aragorn grunted in hazy recognition of his son’s voice, "tell Arwen..." another wet cough, "tell your mother ill wait for her."
"Ada no!" Eldarion begged. His momentary relief turning to panic as he felt the tension fade from his father's body. "You have to stay awake, Ada."
The fear in his son's voice cut through the fog, but Aragorn had exhausted his capacity for speech. Eldarion was alive, and knowing that, he felt his hold on awareness slipping, his sacrifice had been worth it, and he would go gladly onto Mandos and sing him a song more beautiful than Luthien herself, knowing that his son would live. His skull rang with the agony of shattered bone. He could smell his own vomit.
"Ada! Ada!" Aragorn heard his son calling him in great fearful sobbs through the mist as his awareness faded again. The trained healer in him told him that he had a severe head injury, cracked ribs and blood streaming from his sinuses down his throat and out his mouth, he couldnt feel his legs which he supposed might be a mercy. He felt his awareness recede from his body even as he took stock of where he was hurt. The whole pavilion had come down in the blast, bringing down the stone structures on either side of the covered market. His last thought as he lost consciousness was that this was a deliberate attack upon his house.
“Eldarion!” This time it was the queen’s voice. Arwen sounded relieved, her voice pitched with panic.
 
“Naneth!” Eldarion answered her, fresh tears coming to his eyes in the dark.
“Eldarion,” he could hear the joy and relief in Arwen’s tone, “Eldarion, sweetheart, is your father with you?”
“Ada?” he shook Aragorn gently, but he did not respond, “Ada, it's Naneth?!” he took a few breaths before inhaling deep enough to scream, “HE WON'T WAKE UP, NAN! HELP!” His voice cracked, “HELP!”
There were voices too rushed and indistinct to have any meaning. Someone gave a quick, barked order in Khudzul, and with a great cascading fall of sand, a beam of light speared into the narrow space.
“Your Majesty?” came a dwarvish voice. Eldarion squinted up through the dusty beam of light. He had never been so happy to see anyone as he was to see his Uncle Gimli at that moment. The dwarf’s head was silhouetted in red as the light illuminated his hair and beard from behind.
“Gimli!” Eldarion coughed and winced as he felt fresh, hot blood flow into his groin.
“Is your father with you?” Gimli asked. Eldarion looked down to see his father’s face properly for the first time since the explosion. Blood painted his cheek from a dirty gash above his hairline, their was sick in his beard and his skin was grey. "By the anvil of Mahal," the Dwarf swore softly.
“He’s hurt!” Eldarion said, looking up.
“Eldarion!” Gimli was replaced by Arwen, who gasped in horror when she saw her husband’s still face and her son half buried in rubble, “Ai Muk Eru.” She swore, “Aragorn!?” her voice was trembling, and she seemed about to crawl down into the opening, but the dwarf placed a respectful hand hovering above her shoulder.
"Please, your highness, it isn't safe." he pleaded gently.
“Nan?” Eldarion called, and somehow, hearing his mother’s voice made their predicament seem more grave, “WATER!” Eldarion gasped, suddenly realizing that his mouth was parched.
“My lady, I need you to stand aside.” The dwarf was saying. A moment later, a skin of water was lowered through the opening in a beam of light. Eldarion took it eagerly, and, removing the cap took a drink, moistentening his parched throat, a blessing from Ulmo himself.
Carefully, he pressed the nozzle to his father’s mouth, making sure that he swallowed, even in his state of reduced consciousness.
“Ada?” Eldarion pushed his father’s hair, sticky with blood and vomit, back from his face, “they’re getting us out of here."
“We have to tie a hoist around this slab!” Gimli explained, “But a minute more, and you will be free.” There was a sound of digging and scraping, and another portion of the rubble wall
 
fell away. This caused the slab to shift slightly. Eldarion gasped and screamed as the weight on his leg increased.
“Eldarion!” It was Elladan.
"My leg!" the prince sobbed and begged in pain. He clung to his father’s garment with his free hand.
“Quick!” someone shouted. Three dwarves holding a length of thick rope dropped down into the crack. They communicated with lightning-fast hand signs and soon had positioned themselves so that the rope wrapped around the slab, and, with a great cascade of stone and sand, it began to lift incrementally. Looking down for the first time, Eldarion stared at the massive, broken war-hammer that had fallen from the display that he was looking at only a few moments before the blast. It had dug into his leg, the spikes digging into his leg above his knee.
When they had enough room to maneuver, the dwarves carefully lifted the king’s body off of him. Eldarion reluctantly let him be pulled from his arms and it was strange to see the stout little creatures handling his limp body with such gentleness. The image of his father’s bloodied head lulling senselessly as he was lifted from the ruin would remain seared in Eldarion’s eyes for the rest of his life.
“Careful now!” Gimli sounded scared, “Watch his neck.”
“Aragorn!” Elladan called as he helped guide him onto a beir. His once fine sable and burgundy clothing was torn and grey with dust.
Eldarion felt a strong arm grab his own and drag him to his feet, “Easy now, your Highness,” he stumbled against Gimli, feeling his arm dragged over the dwarf’s shoulders. Another hand reached down and dragged him up. A moment later, he was out under the clear evening sky, staggering into his uncle Elrohir’s arms.
“Easy!” the Peredhel was saying as he caught the prince slumping into him, “Eldarion?” He leaned into Elrohir’s chest while he watched where his father had been laid. Elladan was trying to get Aragorn to respond but his eyes would not focus and his mouth hung loosely.
“He has a displaced skull fracture. I need to get him into surgery now.” Elladan was saying to his sister. She was clutching her belly and watching with a lost expression. Her gaze rose to look at her son but settled at his feet, where a deep pool of red was spreading. Elrohir followed her gaze, and even as the cuss left his lips, he found himself catching Eldarion’s body as he lost consciousness.
“Eldarion?” Elrohir caught his nephew under the arms and gently lowered him to the rubble- strewn ground. The boy was pale, and the usually brilliant energy of his young spirit felt greatly diminished. Around them, the Dwarven rescuers were still at work digging out victims and survivors. Someone was screaming.
Arwen had passed young Celiriel to one of her handmaidens a moment before the blast had shaken the market. She could hear the infant screaming, and scanning the crowd, she locked eyes with her handmaiden. “Take her back to the palace!” she ordered the girl, clutching onto Eldarion’s arm, “And send word to Lord Faramir!” the girl promptly left with a detachment of royal guards, clutching the princess to her breast.
“Eldarion? Sweetheart!” Arwen lowered herself clumsily to the ground beside her son’s head as Elrohir tore at his pants with a knife to try and find the source of the blood. He placed the boy’s ankle on his shoulder and started chanting a healing hymn, but with Vilya across the sea, it was mostly a placebo and a very old habit. Grabbing a handful of the prince’s torn brocade cape, he pressed it into the deep puncture wounds on his inner thigh. Arwen looked up for a moment, still in shock, mind already racing to name a culprit. The wind was carrying the settling dust out over the city, and it picked up strands of her hair as it went. The city guard had formed a barrier in front of the gathering crowds. There were gasps of horror and screams as they parted to let Elladan through as he carried their king upon a bier with another of the guards. He had placed a loose field dressing around Aragorn’s head, but he could not disguise the shocking amount of blood or the ragged sound of his breathing.
Eldarion’s swoon lasted only a moment before he woke with a fit of coughing.
“Nan?” he rolled his head into his mother’s thigh and felt her hand holding his head down. He cringed and tried to pull away from Elrohir’s firm hold on his leg. He looked down at his body in dismay, touching the browning stains of his father’s blood.
“Hold still, sweetheart.” Arwen tried to keep the fear out of her voice.
There was a great sliding of rubble, and with a shout, the Dwarven smith, who the king had been speaking to a moment before the explosion, was liberated from a fall of stone and brick. His great black beard was white with dust as he staggered out of the rubble. His once opulent clothing was torn, and his right arm was bloody.
“By the mercy of Mahal!” A very dusty and anxious-looking Gimli stepped forward to embrace him.
“How fares the king?” Tulk looked around, his worried gaze landing first on Arwen and the prince and then around at the ruin that had once been his life’s work. Blinking in shock, the dwarf’s eyes landed upon the now broken war hammer lying in the rubble, stained red with the blood of the prince of Gondor. He picked up the splintered haft of the weapon where the purple gem gleamed beneath a layer of dust.
 
“Was it the weapon of my making that caused this grievous injury?” he asked Gimli, horror mounting in his voice.
“Aye,” Gimli nodded grimly. The smith stepped back, watching as Elrohir wrapped bandages tight around the boy’s leg. Tulk met the queen’s alien, elvish eyes, and a shudder of fear went through him. No matter how the Lord of the Glittering Caves might praise the Lady of the Golden Wood, Tulk could not shake the deep fear that these strange elven royals would hold him responsible for the works of his hands. Shock and despair swirled within him. He took a large ring from his index finger, set with rubies and the anvil of Aule, and threw it into the rubble. Later, he could not fully explain why he did what he did next, except that it seemed the only way forward in which he might maintain his honor and perhaps recoup his financial ruin.
“My lord,” he fell to his knees beside the young prince, averting his eyes from the elf woman’s terrible regard. “As the works of my hands have threatened your life, I, Tulk son of Haru, swear to you my service until the debt is repaid.” He held out the broken haft, and the purple gem glinted in the sinking sun.
Eldarion shook his head, and, pushing his mother’s hands aside, he rose up onto his elbows. His head swam and pounded as he was able to look around for the first time. The staggering dusty figures around him moved like ghosts. He noted that his father had been taken away, and his heart clenched. He saw the lines of covered bodies being dragged from the rubble and heard the cries of the grieving. It seemed to him, in his addled state, that figures of light rose from the fallen corpses to stand among the living. The market was unrecognizable from before the blast. Gone were the high pillars, and the vaulted ceiling hung with silken banners, replaced with grey hills of rubble. The scene passed before his eyes like an image on a tapestry or a play on a stage. Nothing felt real, and his ears were ringing.
“The blast came not from your stall.” Eldarion objected bluntly when his grey eyes fell on the dwarf. He felt concussed, fearful, and heartsick and did not have patience for these theatrics, “you bear no guilt…” but the smith did not react in relief, but to the prince’s surprise, seemed to sink into despair, tears welling in his eyes. He had just lost his life’s work, his business, and (although Eldarion did not understand the significance) his honor as a smith. Glancing at his mother in panic, the young prince changed his approach, “I will gladly accept your service, master dwarf.” Eldarion reached out and took the broken haft from him, “Your first order is to see the healers.” He nodded at Tulk’s bloodied arm. Eldarion fell back heavily as the dwarf lowered his head and stood. Eldarion felt Arwen catch him in a protective embrace under his arms. For a long moment, she just clutched her son’s body, pressing her face into his dusty shoulder. He relaxed back into her pregnant belly, taking comfort in her touch as if he was still a small child.
“How is Ada?” Eldarion noticed that she was weeping. He raised one hand to wipe the tears from her porcelain cheek. He looked at Elrohir. He could feel his uncle’s firm hand over the thick bandages around his thigh. His whole body was tense with rage as he watched his sister’s heart break.
“He has been taken to the palace infirmary,” Elrohir answered tightly. Looking up, he took a stretcher from one of the army of healers who had begun swarming the site of the attack,
 
“which is exactly where you will go.”
“I can walk!” Eldarion said. He suddenly understood what his father had been talking about when he had insisted that they appear together in public and that he brush his hair and stand straight. At the thought of his father’s voice, he felt a great swell of emotion which he swallowed hard. He would not want the people to see his son scared and bleeding.
“You will not.” Elrohir ordered, scooping up his other leg, and, with a look at his sister, they shifted him together onto the stretcher, “You will keep your head down and this leg absolutely still if you don’t want to bleed out.” His uncle snapped, and Eldarion shrank back against the stiff canvas. He clutched the splintered handle in his hand like a lifeline.
“Pardon me, my lady,” a gruff voice said. Tulk had a bandage around his forearm, and his sleeve had been cut away. With a polite bow, he took Arwen’s place, grasping the two handles near the prince’s head, and looked to Elrohir, waiting for orders.
“You were serious?” the Peredhel shook his head in wonder at the dwarf, “you would swear fealty to this half-elven prince?”
“Aye, my lord.” Tulk nodded, “If word of what has happened today reaches the Mountain,” he cringed to admit what he knew would be true, “they will say my works are cursed, my lord, that they thirst for the blood of kings.” He did not say that he worried for his beloved wife and daughter, who would be destitute without him.
Elrohir frowned in sympathy. “Do you know who might have the skill to create such a weapon as this?” he looked at the dwarf evenly.
“The armies of Isengard used such devices at the Battle of the Hornburg!” Gimli reminded them, stepping close and giving the queen a reverent nod. “And my people sometimes use such powders for the splitting of stones, but it is not our preferred method. Rather, it was an art that we learned in ages past from our Noldorin allies.” He carefully avoided implying the guilt of all elves. “The same who taught the White Wizards the art, my lady.”
“You don’t think a dwarf made this bomb?” Elrohir deduced.
“No, my lord,” Tulk shook his head, agreeing with the Son of Gloin. He reached to the ground where a small piece of dark metal shrapnel had embedded itself into the stone and tapped it with one finger. “This is the work of the people of lord Curufinwë.” He made the declaration with absolute certainty. Elrohir and Arwen shared a look of dread.
“When lord Faramir arrives, I want you to tell him everything you know,” Arwen ordered forcefully. She placed a hand on their new ally’s shoulder and felt him recoil in discomfort before she withdrew it.
“Of course, my lady.” Tulk nodded, “For now, grant me the honor of bearing my Lord Prince to the healers.” Arwen frowned at him but saw no deception in the Naugrim’s dark eyes. He looked beaten and still deep in shock.
“Very well.” Arwen nodded. She got up heavily, leaning on Elrohir for support.
 
Eldarion threw his arm across his eyes to block out the curious looks as Tulk and Gimli easily carried him away from the ruined market. He suddenly felt very small and very scared, and he wanted his father desperately. The crowd parted, and they exited into a place where the road came even with the next level of the city. The sun was sinking, and through a veil of tears, he could see the red of the sunset drawing long purple shadows across the Pelennor.