Long Lost Leaves - Part III

[feawen]

Nami looked at the markings and then around the dark cave, not used to having to stare so hard to see so little detail.
Namis desire to find the entwives momentarly was greater then her fear of the dark. "Maybe there is an opening somewhere that the entwives could have got though?" Stepping to the edge of one of the walls she started to walk her way around the walls looking for an opening in the walls.

[Acalewia]

Aelfwine stepped closer to the walls to see the orc drawings closer, or rather better.
"Could these drawings tell us where they may have gone or been taken?"

[Earniel]

"Hard to say," Radagast said, still looking up at the figures. "Entwife-hands aren't exactly fine tools for drawing with clay. And some of the clay has fallen off once it dried. The figures of the Entwives are pretty unmistakenable, but I can't really make sense of what the other lines are."

"They are not lines," Earthshaker rumbled suddenly. "They are names."

The Ent put his gnarled hand on the rock-face under the clay figures as he read them. "Sweetapple. Quickflower. Mosslocks. Summerhay."

"And more," Blossomshade said as she read the names on her side of the wall. "Beechleaf. Morningberry. Wandlimb. There are nineteen names."

Radagast nodded. "Eighteen Entwives beside Fimbrethil, just as she wrote in her final letter to Treebeard. So all those who left their gardens with Fimbrethil were imprisoned here."

At that moment Nami called out to them. Momentarily forgetting she ought to be afraid of the dark, the Elf had wandered a little further off the group and had found a cleft in the wall. The opening was narrow, but high enough to let even the Ents pass. Radagast went through first, accompanied by his fireflies that were flying around his head to light his way.

The opening that Nami had found led them to another natural hall. Unlike the previous one, this one was wider and riddles with pillars.

And at the very end, a little light shone.

[Midge]

Magor was awed. The thought of drawings and writings as old as Entwives boggled his mind. He leaned over to Aerin and whispered, "If your other cave story is anything like this one, I want to hear it as soon as we get out."

Aerin shook her head. "Most of that story is like the story of how we found the pit and the eye. But we'll give you the highlights - Shh!" for at that moment, she noticed a small but bright light far off.

She felt any loud noise would frighten it away and hoped that the clanking members of their group would tread softly.

[feawen]

Lightly stepping up to Radagasts shoulder Nami stopped and peered at the small light. "I don't think it would be this easy, do you? Why do i get the feeling its going to go horribly wrong?"

[Acalewia]

Nami had spoken aloud what Aelfwine had been thinking. This had been too easy. She started looking around them, searching for any kind of trap that might be waiting for them.

[Varnafindë]

Horribly wrong? Barufiniel was glad she still had her bow ready to use. She felt for her dagger, satisfied that it was where she expected to find it, and stared at the light at the other side of the new hall she had entered.

[Earniel]

"Generally," Radagast said, probably misunderstanding Nami, "lights indeed aren't easy to light underground. Especially since these caves have been closed off from the outside worlds for centuries. Look at how our torches splutter and gutter now and then and how the air in here tastes stale. The only fresh air in here has come in with us. So that light over there can't be fire. It glows too evenly as well."

"It could be luminescent lichen," Radagast continued almost to himself. "Luminescent lichen is usually rather harmless. Hardly ever has teeth."

He shook himself, realising his mind was wandering. "Thus far the botany lesson. Let us proceed."

He walked on, gripping his wizard's staff just a little tighter. Cautiously the group walked through the hall, passing the gnarled pillars on their way to the other side.

As they came closer, they saw the light was a lamp, a fëanorean lamp even, burning with a light that wasn't flame. Long ago, many of these lamps had come with the Noldor overseas. In the millennia of war and chaos that followed, their number had dwindled and the art to make them had been lost. Only a few of these lamps still existed, treasured as heirlooms by the remaining Elves. This lamp had been here for a very long time: ancient stalagmites had buried the base of it into the rock. Its metal was mired and blackened. But the art of Fëanor still endured, still casting its light after centuries.

In the light of the lamp the adventures saw an indentation in the rockwall behind it, shaped like a seat, worn smooth with use. There appeared to be some rotting fragments of clothes left behind on it.

[Aikanáro]

<i>A light without a source!</i>

Tabrîl, who had quite deliberately disregarded the pictures on the walls, not believing them to be of any relevance or use to her personally, could not help but look over at the light.

It shone with all the purity of the stars over Kordâla, for all that it was ancient, and such a light to Tabrîl, preserved so long underground, could signify only one thing. It was a sign. A sign perhaps that deeper Mysteries lay ahead. She had seen such a light but once before, high in the tower of Tathilei the Wise before it was laid ruin, countless years ago.

Tabrîl quickly looked away, unsettled, and muttered, to nobody in particular, perhaps only to herself: 'I ought not to be here.'

[feawen]

Nami looked at Radagast a little puzzled. "Are you ok?"
The lamp unsettled Nami, its beauty should not have been in a place so evil looking. Making her bow ready loosely at her side she cast her gaze around the hall. "What are the captors of the entwifes doing with elven lamps? This all feels very wrong to me."

[Earniel]

"All is wrong," a tiny voice said sadly.

The adventurers were startled. The voice was but a whisper but each had heard it perfectly as if someone had been standing right next to them and had whispered it in their ears. But while some turned to look right behind them, they saw nothing but empty space.

"The world is all wrong. Twisted. Gnarled. Dark." The voice complained, now coming from different directions as if someone unseen was circling the adventurers.

"Stay close," Radagast whispered urgently to the others. "Do not move." The last thing he needed was someone bolting. It could have them killed instantly.

The voice continued it's plaintive cry. "Where have the stars gone? Where has the wind gone? No breath. No word. No life. Gone, gone, gone, gone, gone."

"And the Entwives?" Radagast inquired carefully in the silence that followed. "Have they gone as well?"

"No," was the answer after a moment. The voice sounded almost smug.

[Aikanáro]

Tabrîl shivered as she heard the words, the voice of the unseen. She had been wrong, she thought then. If there were Mysteries down here, they were not sacred but accursed, light or no.

It was all she could do to keep still, her instincts telling her to flee. Slowly, she drew her t'rai from her belt, the metal of the small dagger glinting in the lamplight.

[feawen]

Nami saw the glint of light from Tabrils dagger. Slowly Nami raised her own bow a little. "If the entwives are not gone, where are they?" Nami asked the empty space around her.

[Acalewia]

Aelfwine had her bow at the ready. Rohirrim did not run, especially daughters of Riders of the Mark. But the voice was unnerving her. She looked around, hoping to maybe see a glimpse of where the voice was coming from.

[Midge]

Magor saw that many of his companions were readying their weapons, but he made no move to do so. He bit his tongue to keep from chuckling as an image of a Gollum-like creature who kept to the dark was what was putting them all on edge.

His eyes met Aerin's who, though she had not drawn her sword, was clearly tense. Her fingers twitched as she controlled her urge to ready herself for a battle that would likely be the most peculiar of their lives - including the one which involved a blind elf regaining his sight in the midst of the fight. He read in her eyes the same thought in his mind - that too many people revealing their weapons would make whatever this voice was feel more threatened and more prone to unprovoked attack. Still he knew that each member of the company would have heightened reflexes during this strange encounter.

[Earniel]

"Where?" The tiny voice repeated with some surprise as if the question was a foolish one. "Why, they are here! Around us. All here. All alone in the voiceless dark. No sun, no stars, no wind. Lost, lost, lost, lost, lost. Forev- "

The voice stopped its litany as if something had occured to it.

"Who are you?" It suddenly asked sharply, its voice edged with suspicion.

[Acalewia]

"Sweet Elberath," Aelfwine breathed, a bit frustrated. "Whatever it is is toying with us," Her voice was barely a breath, although in these caverns that breath sounded like a whisper. She had the arrow pointing downward but would raise it if the need came. Why was it toying with them? What creature of the Dark was this? Or was this the Guardian Radagast spoke of?

[Varnafindë]

Barufiniel chose to speak up, looking over at Radagast and hoping it would be alright. She had some experience in diplomacy from back at - that other place - and hoped that it might come in useful now.

"Who are we? That depends a bit on who you are. If you're speaking for the Entwives, then we are friends - for we would be their friends."

[Earniel]

"Friends..." the voice sneered. "Friends that are late in the coming. Unfaithful friends. Three thousand years of silence and now you pretend to come and look for them unheeded, unneeded. The Entwives have no friends! "

"They have!" Earthshaker rumbled, getting fired up by the voice's reproaches. "They have both friends and relatives," he said. "We have come to take them home!"

"Entsss," the voice hissed angrily as if it only now noticed them in the company.

"Forest dreamers! Forsakers of kin and blood!" It shrieked. "Go back to your dusty forest-eaves and stay there! You are not wanted here! The Entwives have no home, it withered away wile you idled. It took you aeons to even miss them!"

A short silence fell but too short for any of the adventurers to make a reply. The voice wasn't finished yet. It was growing larger and more agitated the more it spoke. As if after being silent for so long it had to rediscover its strenght by practise.

"The Entwives now need neither home nor Ents," it said breathlessly. "The world grew old and grey and still they waited. But you didn't come, oh no, what lay beyond the forest no longer concerned you! The Entwives told me that you would look for them and would come. But I knew better, oh I did. Had I not waited once, as they did? Had I not also hoped I had been missed? Had I not longed for to be found and rescued as well? But when they came it was not for me. They tore up the mountain-teeth and laid bare the pits but it was not for me. And so they left without me. And I no longer wanted to be found. Year after year, century after century, millennium after millennium. But now I have the Entwives and all they have is me..."

"You will not take them away from me now!" It wailed desperately. The sound echoed through the pillared hall.

[feawen]

It was all getting rather too dark and shouty for Namis liking. She disliked not seeing for opponent. "We dont wish to take them away from you. Maybe" She spoke up. "If you know to which race you belonged we could tell you why no one has come for you. The world has seem much evil over the past hundreds of years, only now has the world and its races for peace."