[Amanaduial the archer]

Raeis felt herself pulled down, a hand wrenching fiercely at her arm, and numbly she fell to her knees in the churned, dusty road of the path, her head bowed. But her eyes remained open, staring at the path, and as the dark prescence moved closer, she froze completely, fists clenched so that her ragged nails dug into her palms, the pain a distraction from the fear that she felt welling up.

Fear.

No.

It was not the voice that Raeis heard in her head: she had not heard it since they had come away from the stones, and she felt the space where it should be like a gaping hole, a space where as dear companion - no, more than that, where a part of herself - had fallen away. Fallen into the shadow of the stones... She jolted as she heard this new prescence. It was not herself, Raeis, who spoke, it was something more. Greater. Some half memory floated up from her past life, a mention of beings greater than any man, greater even than the first born themselves. Fourteen great spirits, powerful and wonderful, and more beautiful in the awe they inspired than Arda itself. The Lords of the West, the Valar, filled Raeis's mind, and they were so beautiful that the very world itself seemed to stop; it was they who had sustained her through the stones, and her eyes filled with tears in gratitude and wonder.

Until a dark shadow fell over her mind.

As the black, cloaked shape of the Nazgul passed in front of Raeis, casting a shadow on both her mind and her crouching body, fear struck the elf once more, and with it there came a powerful, gripping sensation, as if her mind was held in some ice-cold set of talons, dangled by the tail on the claw of a lazy, cruel cat. And the cat wanted to play. She closed her eyes tightly, willing it away. Despite her Haradrim disguise, Raeis felt suddenly naked in the harsh, sere prescence of the Nazgul. Blindly, beyond reason or logic, she flailed inwardly, struggling for an escape, random words and sequences throwing themselves through her mind as if to try to confuse the Nazgul...until it settled on one word.

"Yavanna." Her whisper was barely audible, little more than mouthing the word.

A sudden, terrible hiss emitted from the space above Raeis, like a sharp indraw of breath into long-dry lungs, and the dark shape stopped dead in front of her. Raeis stiffened but did not move. In her mind she held the image which had come with the word, a fair, tall woman, the sun seeming to shine from behind her body, making her glow radiantly and lighting her cascading blonde hair. She smiled gently at the elf in her mind's eye, and her hands spread wide, as if ready to pour forth all many of wonders...

"Nienna; Mandos..."

The vision faded as Raeis whispered the next two words, and two more impossible beings presented themselves: one a male, cloaked and wise, hard, but not unkind, lines set into his face. Around his waist was a thick rope, as on a scribe's habit, and from this hung a keychain, with one giant key. Shadows seemed to move around his body as if there were others near him, just on the edge of sight. Beside him stood a woman, also cloaked, but her hood pulled up over her head, stark against her pale face, wavy lengths of hair falling to her waist from under the hood on either side of her face. Her dark garb and drawn features spoke of a widow in deep mourning, but as Raeis saw her, her lips were lifted into a melancholy smile, as reassuring in it's soft gentleness as Yavanna's bright radiance.

The Nazgul turned from it's path and stalked slowly towards her, but this time Raeis didn't even flinch: the cloaked pair in her mind now moved aside to be replace with a smith, rustic and bearded, a hammer clasped in one giant hand and a metal chain in the other, and a man garbed in fine, rich clothing but whose stern eyes moved like the sea itself. Why it seemed there were even creatures moving in the grey depths... Raeis smiled to herself in a sort of childish simplicity, unaware of all that was around her as she recognised the pair, and named them in a whisper that was now growing in strength. "Aule, and Ulmo..."

From in the depths of his cloak the Nazgul's clawlike fist shot out with lightning quick speed, the great metal gauntlet seizing her throat in it's inescapable grip. Raeis went limp as it wrenched her from her kneeling position until she was a few inches above the ground, held in the asphixiatingly tight deathgrip, the cold void of nothingness staring down at her. Raeis's eyes didn't open, and she stayed completely still - save her lips. Once more they moved as she struggled to speak again, the words springing to her lips as if she was possessed.

"Varda...Elentari..." It was a dry croak but it was enough for the Nazgul to hear, and the image, along with the others, strong and clear enough in her mind to incriminate her. The creaking hiss of the Nazgul and the sliding, silver sound of it unsheathing it's sword was suddenly louder than anything around it: orcs froze, cowering away from it as the hiss rose in a wordless curse. Raeis's companions froze in their tracks. But Raeis did nothing, her rack thin body limp as she opened her one tawny eye to look straight into the soulless void of the creature's eyes as she struggled against the harsh grip to complete the list of the Aratar with the name it would hate the most in an almost silent whisper: the Lord of the Breath of Arda, Master of the Winds and fiercest enemy of Melkor...

"Manwë."

The Nazgul screamed, throwing back it's helmetted head to give a fierce, outraged screech as Raeis felt herself slipping away into unciousness - and felt a pair of hands gripping her ankles.