Laer o Faen

Riniath o Nin

Third Age of Middle Earth – 2840

Istan han eneth

In the end, Elrond had his way, and Thranduil did not depart for Greenwood until morning. It was a day that dawned with a pale and sickly amber, as if the sun never truly rose high enough to make her passage across the sky, and as swift as the Elven horses were, a sense of deep and foreboding urgency burned in Thranduil's blood, and to his mind – and his heart – they were still not swift enough.

They rode without pause, slowing the horses to a gentler pace to provide periods of respite, for they would not press the horses beyond endurance. As they rode, Thranduil ran everything he had learned through his mind, examined his feelings; mixed of a kind of trepidation, and hopeful elation.

Yet... Arwen's vision troubled him, and his own experience on coming into contact with Celyn's ring. To have fallen – no, he corrected his thinking – to have been drawn to the very threshold of the Halls of Waiting was an unwelcome conundrum, of which he could make little sense. Couple that with the clear, cold voice he had heard, telling him – or perhaps telling another, he mused – that there had been a warning given, though as to what he did not know, and the less threatening voice that told him that Celyn was calling to him from the depth of her peril, and Thranduil was more than a little concerned and no less confused.

All through the second day, and into the early evening, Thranduil suffered the discomfort of a growing sense of foreboding, a feeling that pierced like an arrow as the cries went up from those on point, and everyone halted, hands flying to the hilts of blades and the curves of bow alike.

"Rider!"

He narrowed his eyes, looking ahead to the incoming speck that gradually resolved into a message rider of Greenwood, and once he was close enough to the outriders, he called out.

"I deithad ni Daur mín!"

Thranduil waved ascent to the nearest of the outriders, to grant the Elven messenger to ride closer.

The messenger bowed in the saddle, bending from the waist, his hand over his heart, and Thranduil tried to be patient with the Elf while he completed the genuflection, but his heart pounded in an increase of worry. Why would a messenger come from Greenwood, unless there was something...? The messenger began to straighten up, derailing Thranduil's train of thought.

"Speak," he commanded, once he had, trying to keep his voice clear of the worry he felt.

"My lord," the messenger began, "Prince Legolas instructed you be informed at once of an accident. The Lady Nieniriathlim—"

He got no further, before Thranduil shot out his hand to grasp the horse by the bridle, drawing the Elf atop the horse closer, staring into his startled brown eyes as though he meant to pull the truth from the depth of his soul.

"Accident?" he demanded. "What happened?"

"She... she... fell, My Lord, into the water," the unnerved messenger said, "The pool beneath the Silver Falls."

Thranduil frowned.

"What was she doing there?" he demanded, almost as if the messenger were to blame, then before the Elf could answer, the king waved a hand to prevent it and continued urgently, "Ride with me. Tell me everything."

He was about to put heel to horse, to continue swiftly onward toward Greenwood, when the messenger answered, "My Lord, there is little more that I can tell you, save that your son believed that some... strange force was in action upon the lady, pulling her down."