It was dawn in Imloth Melui, a large town spreading over both sides of the River Erui, a tributary of the Anduin. Erui was the shortest river along the Anduin and the only one without a tributary of it’s own. The river flowed through Imloth Melui, dividing Upper Lebennin and Lossarnach.
Imloth Melui was known for it’s many fields of flowers, especially roses. In the western side of the Erui there were many hidden paths behind the rose gardens leading down to the riverbank. Radawen loved walking along these paths in the mornings, admiring the flowing waterfalls and the many bridges of Imloth Melui from beneath. Apart from these enjoyable morning walks she had been wasting her time here so far.
Radawen’s hair was flaming red and very long, extending to the small of her back. She was dressed in a typical Gondorian dress with a long skirt and sleeves and a wide, round neckline. The dress was blue with white rims, belt and armbands. Her eyes were green, open and bright like a forest lake in the sunshine. Her hair color was obviously not natural. In the patriarchal Gondorian society women who dyed their hair were generally frowned upon, especially if their chosen hair color was red. In Gondor red hair dye was usually associated with ’the ladies of the night’, and no proper lady would ever even imagine putting henna on their hair. Which is exactly why Radawen did just that. Underneath the veneer of an intellectual, sophisticated scholar, Radawen was essentially a rebel, a free spirit who could not care less what the stuffy high-borns of the male-dominated, repressing Gondorian society thought about her. Red hair was a statement of her independence and a manifestation of her free, unfettered spirit.
She had left Minas Tirith two days ago after an unexpected and bitter quarrel with Aranuir. It had been foolish of her to ride out of the capital in the middle of the night but she had been so enraged that she had not been able to restrain herself. She had been angry both to Aranuir and to herself for the words she had thrown at the man during their argument. It had made her feel both angry and guilty in turn; at times she blamed Aranuir, then herself again. She could never have believed it possible for her to get in such a fight with a man who had been her mentor first and then more; a friend, a confidant and eventually almost like a substitute father she had learned to care about so much over the years. It was all ruined now.
Radawen had stormed into her messy apartment, taken all her money, stuffed some clothes into an old bag and walked down to the city stables to fetch her pony Rohiril. She had ridden all night along the South Road through the Pelennor Fields and the port of Harlond. In Lossarnach a crippling fear had subsided her rage and guilt as she rode through rain and fog, black mountains silhouetting ominously against the moonless sky. She had been riding for hours in complete silence. The only sounds of the night were the clip-clopping of Rohiril’s hooves against the pavement of the road, the chirping of crickets and the occasional hooting of a night owl. She kept thinking about the argument with Aranuir, then for a long time she did not think about anything at all, and just as silence had started to feel like the only company she needed, she found herself craving for human voices so she could connect with the rest of the world again.
Radawen was thirty-one years old – an old age for a woman of Gondor to still be unwed and without children. Standing at six feet tall she was taller than the average man even in Gondor, the land of tall people. She was attractive in the eyes of most men, but not a flawless beauty. Her upper front teeth were slightly crooked, her nose long and sharp, her eyebrows long and thick. All this gave her face an aggressive, almost witch-like quality, which intimidated most men and kept them at arm’s length. Of course it did not help that she was taller and smarter than most of them, nor that her hair was dyed flaming red and kept unconventially long.
Radawen did not mind being unmarried. She was bright and fiercely independent, and marriage had never been very high on her list of priorities. It was not that she had ruled it out entirely – for love, if she found the right man – but she shuddered at the thought of becoming a living baby factory for the first suitor with means to provide for her and the ever-growing flock of children, as the society seemed to expect of the ’proper’ ladies of Gondor. There had to be more to life than that. For the time being she was quite content with her scholarly pursuits in the Houses of Lore.
Or had been, until her argument with Aranuir had ended it all.
The long ride ached in her back and burned in her thighs. She stretched up, slumped down and finally climbed off Rohiril’s back to walk the pony for a while to rest both the animal and her own aching riding muscles. She wasn’t at all scared through her lonely voyage through the night, not until the dawn in Arnach when the stable-master there suggested they could share the early morning behind the hay bales, ’rolling in the hay’, as the black-toothed creep put it. That’s when she had realized her situation. The argument with Aranuir had shoved her out of the scholarly world of Minas Tirith, which had been her world for the past few years. Now she was just a lonely girl on a nameless road along the Erui, following an idea she had got.
It was Aranuir who had told her that the Rangers had moved Romenstar into Imloth Melui. Then he had tried to forbid her from going there. But Aranuir could not understand why Radawen had to follow Romenstar and after the quarrel had began and developed she was not able to explain it to him. Aranuir had said that it was too dangerous to get mixed up with the business of the Rangers; and hadn’t she already learned that, in the hard way? He had said it was too dangerous not only for Radawen, but to Aranuir as well and all the scholars and lore-masters in the Houses of Lore besides. Aranuir had claimed that she needed Radawen’s assistance in the Houses of Lore for the time being, and finally he had simply forbidden her to leave. There had been some unnecessarily harsh words Radawen now regretted, after which Aranuir had told her that if she left now, she could stay for as long as she wanted because she was not welcome back. After which Radawen had stormed out of the Houses of Lore, and that had been the end of it.
Aranuir should have understood that she had to go. He should have understood that her stubbornness was not a simple matter of scholarly ambition. It had to do with something far back in her past, her treasured big brother Tologben whom she had adored; it had to do with Tologben’s mysterious disappearance during a ’special assignment’ into Rhûn, years ago now. But how could have she explained all this to Aranuir, who did not know about her past?
And then there had been nothing more to say, because Aranuir had turned his back on her in the big nave of the Houses of Lore. Aranuir had been so angry and so impossible Radawen could not say anything more to him. There had been nothing left to do but to leave and continue the chase of Romenstar and the shadows of her past.
Radawen thought about it now, as she was climbing the path up from the riverbank of the Erui where she had been admiring the waterfall. A bridge crossed the Erui ahead where the path turned steeply right and climbed up into a rose garden in Imloth Melui. It began raining, slowly, foggily, as if as an afterthought. Radawen stopped walking and closed her eyes. The rain felt cool on her skin and refreshed her.
She tried to think about Tologben again. She could barely remember him anymore as the living, talking, touching, laughing big brother he had once been; she could only remember the stern Citadel Guard Tologben that was depicted in the family portrait in her room.
The morning was progressing in the east. Everywhere on the banks of Erui the houses took a dirty gray cast and became more distinct in the gray light. The red sky in the east began to turn gray as well, as the clouds from the east blocked the sun. It started raining harder.
As she approached the bridge Radawen saw a dark silhouette of a cloaked, hooded figure standing there, staring keenly at her direction. Suddenly Radawen felt scared. She picked up her pace as she walked the rest of the path before it turned right and climbed up, through the roses and into the gardens of Imloth Melui. She was walking quickly now, away from the bridge where the cloaked figure had stood. She could not help but glance over her shoulder.
And there it was, a hooded figure in a dark gray cloak. Radawen kept walking, and the cloaked figure followed. She knew it, she could almost feel it behind her, but she would not turn to look again. Maybe it was just some pervert who got his kicks from following women around, perhaps it was not something she should be afraid of.
Her feet slapped steadily into the wet pavement. Only about a mile to the inn, on the other side of the river.
Dark gray clouds hung low in the sky. The gulls watched her going with their calm, malevolent eyes. They circled in the breeze above her, diving occasionally, silently, watching her and the few people about town and the roses and the sleepy houses built of marble and stone along the river.
On a bench next to a bridge a boy and a girl squeezed each other tightly to keep the morning chill away. Radawen slowed down her steps as she crossed the bridge, stopping for a moment in the middle of the bridge and turned around to look. The gray-cloaked figure stopped behind a rose bush near the bridge to wait and stare at Radawen’s direction. Her eyes narrowed. She could see the hood, but the face beneath it was concealed in shadows.
When the figure realized it had been spotted it retreated slowly, turned around and started down the street until it disappeared behind more roses.
A man in a gray cloak, watching her.
Why? Because of Romenstar? Was he yet another Ranger? Or just some pervert with bad thoughts, following a lonely girl walking in the rain? Radawen stared at the empty street, feeling cold. It must be because the rain had soaked her to her skin, she thought. Her blue dress was glued around her slender body.
