[Feanor of the Peredhil]

The village had welcomed them back, unsuspecting. The Dark Lady watched from her tower; the village had not seen their long forgotten lady, standing beautifully alone in her high window, watching the shadows of the clouds caress the fields between her broken castle and the innocent village beyond; they had turned from her power long before, and had made unconscious habit of averting their eyes from the haunting remnants of her reign.

Only one time during the day could they not escape reminder of her presence: in the latest light of afternoon, the darkest, most intense light of twilight, the shadow of her tower stretched across the land, reaching greedily toward the village, a path of early night between the Lady and her prey. She watched them, draping herself in the frame of her window, a desolate portrait of despair and hate lit by nothing, accompanied only by her faithful feathered friend, and she let the breeze carry her tainted whispers to them.

She had poisoned the innocence of two travellers. She had taken them in, had called to them as they looked beyond the gate, and they had come. They had moved forward in curious exploration, had only suspected seconds before it was too late. She had met their eyes and they had met their fates, sealed forever in the darkness of her thoughts and the regularity of the distant moon. And then, with the break of the dawn, she had sent them away.

Through their eyes she had seen the activities of the day. She had seen the village take its first, tottering steps toward its own destruction.

She had whispered words to them, and to herself, watching carefully their faces when a soundless voice greeted them, calling to them, "O, what men dare do! What men may do! What men daily do, not knowing what they do!" Her voice was silk and poison, and their eyes grew afraid, and they spoke anew, with more haste.

"I do not understand." Many shared this sentiment, and others tried to calm them.

"It is what she wants..."

She laughed long, deep inside her, and in this sudden show of humanity she seemed fiercer than before. Not all wished to acknowledge her, her dangerous presence just outside the village, just beyond its borders. Some looked toward the East, glancing away from the crumbling castle. She could not be there; of course she was not. She had left long before. She was gone. The Lady of the Night had disappeared, and it was of no bearing to assume the fear that shivered them all was her doing.

The air had grown cold and the shadows had deepened. It is just the season, some rationalized. This is natural suspicion.

"She wants us to fear!" cried those who remembered, those who had known her long before. They had had extensive dealings with the Dark Lady, and knew she was never to be taken lightly.

"She is gone!"

The accusations began. Only a day, she smiled, and they have turned on each other. Fools, unhappy fools, how you delight me.

"You work for her," one hissed.

"You do not know me, sir!" Anger. Defense. "I have never. In all my time, I have never... Why now? Why would I begin now?"

A young scholar stepped forth. "He is mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf, a horse's health, a boy's love, or an oath. We should not trust her claims."

"We will all die." The voice was grave; that of a gravedigger, echoed by many. "But first, so shall it be that we will fight."

And so it came to be that two villagers were led forth to the shadowed gallows and their eyes strained to follow the darkness to the tower in the distance, but they resisted.

The Dark Lady smiled grimly. So it begins. So it ends. So doth the play move ever onward, tinged with love, and with death. Life is but a walking shadow; a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

The villagers looked with haunted eyes upon their fellows. "You have betrayed us," they seemed to say.

"Who will die?"

All looked to the speaker.

"What mean you?"

"We cannot take the lives of more than one... it is forbidden." The gravedigger. The master of ancient lore, rememberer of forgotten poems of needful thoughts of ancestors. "So it has been written, and so it must be done. Only one will die this day."

A man stood before the crowd, and a woman. They looked to each other with fear, to the crowd with disdain. "Betrayers." they spoke. High in her tower in the distance, the Lady laughed. What comes of this will prove most cruel, she thought.

The man spoke to the village with dignified calm. "Spare the lady."

"You dare to die yourself to save her?"

"I dare do all that may become a man; who dares do more is none."

With respect in her eyes she stepped again into the warmth of the crowd, and a tear glistened on her cheek. "Fare thee well," she murmured, her eyes bright with unknown thought.

In moments he was still. The town's sociologist surveyor was gone, his spirit having fled the confines of this world. The man they killed was innocent. The Dark Lady laughed through the eyes of her pawns.