[Anguirel]

"This way. Come a little further into the shade. It may seem strange to you...but the Coavalta are scorched cruelly by light, and we cannot be seen under its glare..."

Their long foray had at last yielded a drop of success, and for a moment, Endamir felt alleviated of the burden of dread. For all its antique accents, Idrahil's voice sounded nothing more than less than what Malris had described-a bluff and benevolent soldier...

"Wait!" Lomwe hissed. "Hang on, Endamir. We can't all be like Malris and trust to wind-borne tongues."

"Malris is with you also?" the tones of Idrahil rung again, strange now, caught with a note both of sorrow and of hope. "Then he must..."

"It's not about Malris that we have come, spirit," Lomwe interrupted. "One of our companions is gravely hurt and needs the counsel of..."

"The Diviner, I know. But first," the Seneschal murmured, "will you trust to the wind-borne tongue?"

The pair of Elves looked into each other's eyes, till Lomwe turned away his gaze, glancing between his feet. Endamir's face set, and he stepped forward into the shaded part of the tower.

The figure before him was, as the Elves at the gatehouse had been, lustrous and translucent, as if formed from pale moonlight; only slivers of his form visible, rippling in and out of sight. Large, silver eyes bore down at the loremaster.

"You came in the end. Good. I will send for the Diviner," the Seneschal intoned, "but swaying him may not be easy..."

The Seneschal seized up a short bugle from his waist, blowing an eerie note on it. In answer, two more ghostly figures, shining faintly, drifted from the torch brackets.

"Fetch him hither," Idrahil commanded, "and hurry..."

***

The other search party, Malris and Tasa, were not receiving any such enlightenment. Each bastion they attempted was nothing more than a shattered dereliction, straddled by cobwebs so complex they resembled robes, which soon caught in Tasa's long, golden hair.

"You are Artanis's equal now," Malris teased. "Tresses of both gold and silver..."

Even with Lindir's peril in their minds, and, as it seemed, perpetual failure before them, there were a few such moments of gladness, whether in each other's company, or in sighting of aspects of Himring that evoked powerful memories. For Malris it was always the mundane, the humdrum, which stirred his heart most deeply; a piece of graffiti by an Elf named Iorlach who had fallen in the Nirnaeth-

Morgoth has only got two jewels
The other is snug in Thingol's Halls

Out of their sight or understanding, outside the bedchamber of Malris and Giledhel, in the fourth bastion he and Tasa were to enter, the Lady's Orcs made ready.

***

Why must I come? The Seneschal has no right to control me. I have no wish to shame myself by aiding the cowards.

The Diviner was back in the guise almost everyone, corporeal or not, saw. A petulant, frail-looking male Elf, pedantic and scholarly in tone, a sort better calculated to raise ridicule than fear.

Idrahil invokes your friendship. He says you have lost it if you do not come, said the taller, elder of the sentries of the torch brackets.

Very well. But do not expect me to leave my hermitage for long...or to provide any help...

Passing out of sight, the three spirits whirled from the cavern. Exhausted and frightened, Oremir and Lindir had heard and felt them only as a freezing breeze.