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Lómwë started violently at the loud crash across the room as a large loudly cawing crow flapped across the room straight towards them. The raucous bird made its way down to the lower floor and out the door, its cries soon fading. Lómwë felt rather foolish – it had been just a crow. This place was making him jumpy, was all. Yet… what had set it off? He doubted it was their mere presence – crows did not go twittering off at the slightest movement as did sparrows. It seemed to him that the sound of laughter carried in the air.
“I’m going to have a look,” he said, stepping carefully off the stair landing onto the wooden floor. He tested every step, making sure not to put his foot through one of the many holes in the dark room’s floor. What he did forget to watch for was for charred and corroded floorboards – before he had made it halfway across the room, he put his foot down on a board that felt sturdy but gave way as his full weight came down upon it. His fall stopped for the moment when his leg was sticking through the floor up to about the knee, but he could tell that the surrounding wood wouldn’t take much more before it, too, fell out. For the second time in about as many minutes, Lómwë found himself feeling undeniably foolish.
A flash of movement out of the corner of his eye showed Endamir taking steps to come help, but Lómwë waved him back, saying: “Wait, stay where you are – you might fall through, too. I think I can get myself out of this.” But as he carefully began to extricate himself, the sound of laughter became unmistakable – coming from that same far corner from which the crow had come. Lómwë froze as the laughter turned into words: “They think they want my help, don’t they? They want lots of help, help they can’t get here – help to find the Seneschal, help from the Seneschal, help from the Diviner – that’s what they really want. But will they like the help they get? I don’t think they will – foolish ones, don’t know what they want… or how to get there.” Lómwë guessed that last was aimed at him, but he didn’t have a chance to hear any more as the voice rapidly descended into mad laughter, which was just as abruptly cut off.
Lómwë worked quickly now at freeing himself, but only concentrating half way on the task at hand – his mind was racing at the words of the mad Elf – for it seemed clear to Lómwë that this was to whom the voice must belong, and he was glad that he could not recall any particular Elves that had once garrisoned this bastion. To think of the noble Eldar who had once dwelt here – sunken so low as that? Perhaps it was best not to think of it. But his words – he obviously knew something of Idrahil Seneschal and the Diviner, though Lómwë doubted they would get much more information, and what he knew did not seem to be pleasant. He wished he could shove these troubling thoughts away as he so often did with troubling memories, but Lindir’s problem was too pressing, too present.
Finally, he fully pried his leg free and found his breaches to have been torn. Fortunately that was all the damage that had been done. He made his way back to where Endamir was still waiting. “Well,” he said, “it seems we’re not going to find the Seneschal here…”
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