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Old 11-11-2003, 02:05 AM   #144
Elora
Shade of Carn Dûm
 
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Join Date: Apr 2003
Location: Kalrienmar
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Elora has just left Hobbiton.
Sting

Naiore

Naiore withdrew, taking the mithril bound tomes with her, and left the Men and Hobbit to their chatter. She bent over Vanwe, who moved restlessly. She could sense that Vanwe's consciousness was a turgid, rolling stream barely held in check by her earlier action and the exhaustion of the day. It was troublesome and Naiore sighed pensively as she watched her daughter's eyelids flicker.

The options were little to Naiore's liking. Apply force, and she would loose Vanwe's willing cooperation. Things would go harder then. She could lie, though the idea was unappealing. Perhaps she could slip through words without having to directly engage in spoken deceit. It was one thing to know Vanwe craved a mother and quite another to know how to use that craving to its fullest potential before she destroyed the tool that Vanwe was.

Still, Naiore had deciphered knottier puzzles in the past, Vanwe's father, for example, and she would do so again. With only that thought and the awareness that for the moment her trained and honed discipline outweighed her daughter's strength, Naiore straightened to her full height. She swept an impassive gaze in a serene face across the camp. Barrold and Avanill were preoccupied and Toby seemed intent on making himself as small and unnoticeable as he could.

Satisfied that all was in order, Naiore withdrew to a vantage that afforded a good view about their camp area. In time, the camp still. Barrold's snoring came and went regularly. Avanill continued his work. Toby curled into a tight ball and slept as best as he could with one eye open. Naiore, for her part, sat in the darkness as though she were made of living night itself. Only the flicker of the dying fire gave her movement as the flames shone in her pale golden hair. On her lap lay the silver books, large and beckoning to her.

It was not until Avanill retired for the night that Naiore at last succumbed to the lure of the stolen books. She set her senses to range about the camp. If any approached, she know of their emotional presence long before she would see them with her keen Elven sight anyway. That done, Naiore studied the locks that Tallas had used to secure the two books.

"Cunning old man," she muttered quietly to herself in the tongue of her youth. There was noone about to raise a brow at the Quenyan language that fell from her mouth. Adding fuel for the fire, Naiore began to work at the locks. The stars above watched on as she brought to bear all the Noldorin ingenuity that was her heritage upon the locks. As it was, it took nearly half an hour to pry them loose. Naiore heard the light click and extracted the delicate tipped dagger that she had been using to pick the lock.

It was a rare piece, Noldorin and invaluable. She inspected the tip for damage and stowed it away, her concern for the contents of Tallas' locked books outweighing her love of such exquisite pieces of craft. She added more fuel, took a deep breath and let her gaze fall onto the first page.

The books were of vellum, smooth and creamy to the touch. Upon them, a flowing script in the Tengwar mode of Beleriand curled over the pages. It had been long since Naiore had beheld the ancient writings of her kin and at first she smiled a rare, true smile to see them now. All her own books, written in Tengwar, had been destroyed with Minas Morgul and Barad-Dur, years agon now.

Her smile was beautiful and illuminary, creating a glimpse of what it was that so beguiled others in earlier days of innocence. It soon faded as she poured through what Tallas had read. It was a history, in astonishing and revealing detail of Finarfin and his descendants. It described names, children, spouses. It told of deeds and battles fought, from the First Age onwards.

It was, in short, a record of Naiore's family. In that alone it was remarkable. Few such accounts remain. It's detail, accuracy and completeness was astounding. Naiore read quickly, as ever she had. Names leapt off the page, snagging her interest. As she progressed, her smile grew cold and then faded.

Naiore slammed shut the first book breathing rapidly. Her fingers shook a little as she withdrew the dagger again and set to work on the second lock. Her heart beat rapidly in her chest. When it sprang open, she cast her dagger aside and tore open the mithril cover to resume reading.

The sight of Naiore Dannan unnerved so was rarer than the book she read or the dagger she had used to pick its lock. When her true fate had come to her people's knowledge, much of this information had been erased. Her parent's name and lineage, for example, had been removed from her. In many records, she did not exist, such was the shame. It had suited Naiore well. It was not always a good thing for her descent to be common knowledge and she had worked equally as hard to conceal it over the years.

But here, right before her eyes, it was all laid out. Parents, cousins, kindred through the generations. Names of the past, some victims and some not, and names of the future. Léspheria was a name of the future that was linked to the past. Galadriel was a name of the past that always had given Naiore a moment's pause when she heard it.

But that was not all that Naiore read in Tallas' books. Tallas had managed to set down a telling, of sorts, of her affairs. Some of it was conjecture, crimes she had committed and crimes she had not. She was startled at how much Tallas had been able to sort through. Some of the accounts she had thought were not known to any but her and Sauron. How Léspheria came to escape her attention also alarmed Naiore. Her mother she had dealt with thoroughly, Naiore well recalled.

That had been early in her career, at a time when Naiore had thought her true nature still unknown to her kin. She was wrong. It suggested that there were other things she was mistaken about also, a concept that inspired true misgivings within her. Naiore could not even begin to guess at what though, until she nearly dropped the book at the mention of another name.

Menecin

Had any in the camp been awake, they would have witnessed an uncanny change in Naiore's demeanour. Gone was the cold, tightly disciplined facade. Gone was her impassive serenity. Gone also was the guise of power and control. In this, Naiore was at the mercy of Tallas' account of an Elf named Menecin.

Her fevered reading skipped back and forth from word to word, as if unsure that what she read was truly written there.

"Menecin! Kuila? Laa! Ta na raika! Furu! Laa! (Menecin alive? No! It is wrong! A lie! No!)

"Im uya hanya." (I do not understand.) Doubt and uncertainy were notes in her whispers. That she even spoke to the night was a measure of how shaken the Ravenner was. She backtracked through what she had read. It told of Menecin's sucess at last, after long searching through hundreds of years, in finding her. It told of what happened, and it was as Naiore recalled it except in one, crucial aspect. Menecin was alive.

Naiore re-read the passage three times, searching for some subtelty in language and expression that she had missed, shaking her head as she bent over the pages. Naiore paused, closing her eyes and pressing her fingers over her mouth in shock and dismay. Menecin had survived her leavetaking of him.

Ai! The danger of such as he, knowing what he knows now! It was all that she could do to keep from wailing at the uncaring stars. Fearful and pale, Naiore pressed on and the muttering in Quenyan continued.

"Nev qualin, serke, mi Imladris… (Near dead, blood, in Imladris… )

"Maile ten unquale…nwalyaello suule… orme an..." (Lust for death, tormented of spirit, violent to…)

Her fingers paused their trail underneath the words, brows knitted, and then Naiore pressed on. The rest was an account of Menecin's state of insanity and barely contained violent rage. He had terrifying periods of lucidity, it was said, unpredictably coming and going. The account moved on after that, but it held little of interest compared with her discovery.

The fire had diminished and the movement of night creatures had become steadily more prevalent as her watch wheeled on.

"Curse Barrold for leaving the third," she muttered at the outline of the Man beneath his cloak, snoring blissfully. It was perhaps another hour before he startled awake. Naiore sat in the night, the fire mere embers now, as he struggled to sit up right. No sooner had he managed to do so did he hear a terse command.

"I will take the second watch also," Naiore said tonelessly. Barrold yawned and sank back to sleep, too fogged to question Naiore's generous offer. Naiore remained where she was seated, the two mithril books piled beside her, studying Vanwe with all the intensity of a hawk watching its dinner.

Is Menecin behind your appearance, daughter? It could surely be no coincidence, Vanwe's escape from the South to arrive here just as Naiore was making her long overdue move. Neither was it a coincidence that Rangers crawled through the lands like vermin. Sent from Imladris, where Menecin lived.

But what to do, if anything? She could still move against the Shire, ahead of her foes as she was. She'd have to contend with Imladris though, if she did that, and they'd come after her from behind. Menecin only made Imladris' threat more potent. Who else knew her better than he? He knew who she was and what she had become. He knew her capabilities. And Vanwe could be his poisoned gift that would bring her undone. Lure and bait.

As Naiore sat and pondered, she was minded of the hunted and the hunter. If she was hunted, there were two options. Run, or hunt them in her own turn. Chasing after Rangers one by one through the wilds was far from wise. But, strike at Imladris, where the greater threat lay...

And use the means of her destruction against the ones who would see her fall. The Shire would wait. It would only topple the easier without Imladris to aid it. The Rangers would easily be dealt with also, Imladris decimated. A plan, formed of cold revenge and hatred for a cloying past, took shape within Naiore's mind as the night passed.

[ November 11, 2003: Message edited by: Elora ]
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Characters: Rosmarin: Lady of Cardolan; Lochared: Vagabond of Dunland; Simra: Daughter of Khand; Naiore: Lady of the Sweet Swan; Menecin: Bard of the Singing Seas; Vanwe: Lost Maiden; Ronnan: Lord of Thieves; and, Uien of the Twilight
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