A white horse with a rider advanced slowly towards the stairway between two ancient stone columns leading inside the old ruin that had been mined into the rock many centuries ago. The decorative stone arches surrounding the stairway were covered with vines of wild grapes, gleaming moistly in the autumn rain. Behind the horse rushed the river Bruinen, wrapped in a heavy fog.
Cugusaelon watched the stairway ascendinging into the shadowy depths of the cliff as he dismounted his horse. Approaching this place always filled his heart with dread.
He brushed an imaginary speck of dust from the sleeve of his flowery tunic as he paused to look at the entrance to Delossad. His hands were elegant, his fingers long and his fingernails always carefully trimmed. After a moment of hesitation he climbed the stairs and walked through the passageway mined into the rock until he arrived to the garden.
He strolled around the edge of the garden until he came to another set of stairs rising to an upper courtyard that surrounded the garden on the second floor. Once he had climbed the stairs he turned, leaning on a massive stone column, and looked down at the garden below. Then he turned again and gazed at the enormous oak doors opposite the stairs. Cugusaelon knew that the doors would be locked and he would not be let in if he knocked; he had been in this place before. Instead he started walking around the upper courtyard surrounding the garden.
The woman he had come to see was standing at the door of one of the empty prison cells bordering the upper courtyard. She was looking down at the garden, regarding the same view that had entranced Cugusaelon a moment earlier.
Cugusaelon walked over to the old woman and stood beside her, looking down at the garden in silence as if it was some kind of strange ritual they had to follow before speaking up.
”Lovely view”, Cugusaelon said at last in Westron, his voice lisping into the rhythm of a native Sindarin-speaker. He arranged the folds of his tunic again.
”Who is the man from Gondor?” Sara asked at last. Her voice was creaking, whiny and high-pitched. The comic arrangement of her facial features reflected displeasure.
”I don’t know”, Cugusaelon said. ”I have not received any more correspondence from Parthadan in Minas Tirith. Not after what happened to… Gwathrandir.”
”Then why has he sent another spy snooping up here?”
”I don’t know. I have no idea. I sent another messenger to Gondor to inform Parthadan of Gwathrandir’s fate, but he has not elected to respond. It has been many months now.”
Sara smiled then. It was the vicious and cunning smile of a cat with a mouse in its mouth.
”Your friend in Minas Tirith doesn’t trust you anymore”, she said. ”Gwathrandir’s death concerned him enough to make him send someone else in his stead. And to do what? To try and contact Laureanis and find out what happened to the elf.”
”Sara.” Cugusaelon wriggled beneath the heavy hold of the old woman’s piercing gaze.
”I am just trying to protect Narmeleth”, Sara said. ”You and Laerdan are the only two elves in Rivendell who know what – who – is behind those doors.” Sara nodded towards the big oak doors. ”Do I need to remind you of your promise to Laerdan? Do you realize what would happen to Narmeleth if Elrond or anyone else in Rivendell found out what really happened to her after the Battle of Fornost – and that Laerdan has kept her locked up in here ever since?”
”Can I see her?” Cugusaelon asked.
”You know what Laerdan thinks about that”, Sara said. ”It is too dangerous. She is possessed by an evil spirit – Amarthiel’s spirit resides within her, and Laerdan thinks it’s too dangerous for any elf to be in contact with her. Only Laerdan has done that, and even he hasn’t come to see her in years. I think he is afraid of Amarthiel's power raging within his daughter. You have to take my word for it. Narmeleth is well – at least physically. In spirit there has been no improvement. Laerdan still holds out hope of finding a cure for her… condition.”
Cugusaelon said nothing to that. He could not shake the feeling that something was not quite right – something had not been right since the past year at least. Cugusaelon was among Laerdan’s oldest friends. He had been with Laerdan at the Battle of Fornost and during it’s aftermath, when his daughter Narmeleth had begun to show the first signs of her peculiar sort of madness. They had made the decision to keep Narmeleth’s condition a secret from Elrond and the Eldar in Imladris and to imprison her in Delossad. Apart from Laerdan and Cugusaelon the only other person who knew the secret was one caretaker of the race of Men – Sara Oakheart and all those who had come before her – who took care of Narmeleth’s daily needs during her imprisonment.
But it seemed to Cugusaelon that Sara had changed. At first she had been just a simple old healer who lived in a cottage by the Bruinen river, a sweet old lady who was not interested in many things apart of her herbs and Narmeleth’s well-being. But something had changed during the past year or two. Sara had changed somehow. There was a new kind of menace about her now, and she had also turned a lot more curious. She had started making demands and requests for odd bits of rumors and happenings in and around Imladris from Cugusaelon. He was not sure if he should communicate his feelings to Laerdan, but Laerdan had been very busy of late and Cugusaelon did not want to burden his friend with his doubts and suspicions which were more than likely all in his imagination anyway.
”What would you have me do?” Cugusaelon asked. ”I don’t understand any of this.”
”No”, Sara said. ”And it’s better that you don't. I think this new man wants to get in contact with the elves in Rivendell, Laureanis in particular. So let us make him useful for our own purposes.”
