Everyone in the kitchen began to feel almost hypnotised by the continuous chanting of Radagast. He seemed to have been doing it for hours.
They had settled in chairs around the table where Calentoliel lay, tended by the ancient wizard. Occasionally he would signal with a rapid movement of his hand that he needed one of them to fetch him more water,or cloth to soak up the blood.
The bleeding had finally been staunched but her palor was still unearthly. The wight's themselves would have taken her as their own. Still Radagast would not give up.
She had caused them all to jolt awake at one point when she suddenly sat bolt upright, as if to scream and yet no sound had issued from her lips. They had all rushed to her side uttering comforting words but after coughing up yet more blood she had slipped away from them again.
Radagast had ceased to bend over her and instead changed his position so that he sat,perched on the table's edge, one foot on the floor, one dangling as he looked down upon her. Regularly he wiped her forehead with a cold wet cloth that had been once part of Rothalle's underskirt. He stoked her cheek with his cool finger tips. He never ceased in his incantations. Radagast was facing his own personal beast while he tended Calentoliel. He could not allow her to die. He knew who she was and how important she was as was each member of the company in the destruction of the Beast. It was not merely that which made him so determined. He had grown immensely fond of all of them. He could not bare to lose a single one of their band. Once, long ago it would have been within his power to save her.
The others were now asleep and he alone kept vigil. The candles lit to guide the others home fizzled out. Tom remained outside tending the beacon fire so the one in the grate fell into grey embers with no one to watch it.
Still Radagast whispered Calentoliel's native tongue. The fever was breaking and he was too exhausted to notice.
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Auriel
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