She saw the smoke when she came around the great bend on the path from Imladris northwest of the Giant Valley in the High Moor.
Laureanis was soaking wet. Autumn rains had soaked the ground so that her horse was covered in mud all the way below the withers. Had Laureanis worn a traveling cloak, she would have remained dry, but she did not like cloaks – not even when it was raining. She did not like the way cloaks restricted her freedom.
She noticed the smoke rising from up the hill, curling in the air. It was the kind of smoke a campfire produced. She let the horse climb the path up the hillside. Pine and spruce grew there, dripping water like umbrellas turned upside down. The air smelled of rain and wet soil and approaching winter.
Laureanis leaned forward and removed her bow from the hanger. She did not have fear towards the campers up the hill, but she was not expecting a pleasant encounter with them either. She knew that sometimes travelers from the west, the Lone-Lands and beyond, came to the Trollshaws looking for adventure or solitude. These travelers were sometimes hunters and sometimes troublemakers on the run from the law.
The horse climbed higher and the camp came into view. There was a tent erected by a rockface and a campfire by the tent. A solitary man dressed in brown cloak and hood sat cross-legged by the fire. He saw Laureanis approaching but did not move a muscle.
Laureanis sat on the saddle and waited, wanting to see if she was welcome. She stared at the unmoving, silent man. A cloak covered his head so she could not see the color of his hair, but she could see that he was in his middle age. His eyes were gray, cold and relentless as they returned Laureanis’ gaze. He was not frowning nor smiling; his face, cut with lines of age like cuts from a knife, revealed nothing.
Laureanis dismounted and approached the campfire, an arrow nocked against the bow. The silence hung between them like a dark cloud.
”I have come here for Gwathrandir”, the stranger finally said.
Laureanis stirred. She had not expected this. It only took her a moment to collect herself.
”I see”, she said with a voice as cold and distant as his was flat and monotonous. ”And who are you?”
”My name does not matter.”
”You are from Gondor.”
”Gwathrandir was sent here to find out about Laureanis. I don’t know what he found, but he never returned. Somebody killed him.”
”How do you know that?”
”I know who you are”, the man said in a flat tone. There was no attempt to alter the Gondorian accent of the Sindarin he spoke. ”I know that Gwathrandir’s real name was Maglor and Laureanis was his wife. I know this because he once told his story to me himself, a long time ago. And now that I have seen you up close, now that I have seen your eyes, I know that you are Laureanis. I know it because Maglor described you to me once. He told me about your eyes.”
She sat down by the campfire across from him. Across the wisp of smoke from the campfire they could each see the shape of the other. And they could see each other’s eyes clearly, even if the sky was gray with heavy clouds and the sun, wherever it was, already setting. Laureanis stared at him and the color of her eyes changed from moment to moment, going through all the colors of the spectrum.
”Who are you?” she asked.
”Delioron”, he said. ”But my name does not matter.”
”When did you know Maglor?”
”Fifteen years ago. In Rhûn. Did you kill him?”
Laureanis stared at him for a moment in silence before answering. ”No. I would not kill him. I could not. He came to look for me after all the yéni because he still loved me. He wanted my forgiveness, he wanted…”
”Stop”, Delioron interrupted. ”That’s a lie. You know full well why he came.”
”Do I? Oh, but indulge me anyway. Why did he come?”
”He came to spy on you.”
Laureanis did not blink. ”Who are you?”
”I gave you my name already and it does not mean anything.”
”When did you know Maglor?”
”Fifteen years ago in Rhûn. In the mountains of Kravod in Narimanush, during a rebellion against Sauron’s rule there. We were both helping the rebels at the time.”
”You were his friend.”
”I barely even knew him”, Delioron countered. ”Maglor did not have any friends. He told me his story because he had been carrying it for so long. He needed to tell it to someone and there was no-one else but me. But I was not his friend.”
”Yet here you are now.”
”I came because I was sent here.”
”It sounds to me like when you described Maglor you were really describing yourself”, Laureanis pondered. ”Do you have stories you have been carrying for too long, with no-one to tell them to?”
”Maglor was not my friend”, Delioron said. ”He was a fool. When his quest for the Silmarils failed, he should have come back to you and forgotten about the whole thing, instead of wandering in the wilderness for all eternity in his self-imposed exile, feeling sorry for himself.”
”You did not strike me as such a romantic at first glance”, Laureanis said, suddenly weary.
”And after thousands of years of pointless suffering imposed upon you and himself, he suddenly comes back to you and makes a martyr of himself.”
”He should not have come”, Laureanis said. ”Not now. There are bad things happening in the Trollshaws, things I could not tell him about. He would have ruined everything.”
”So you killed him.”
”I did not kill him. It shows that you don’t know half as much as you think to even suggest that.”
”Then tell me. What is happening here?”
”I cannot tell you that. Not now.”
”Tell me.”
”I work for Elrond. The nature of my work is… clandestine. I only report to Elrond.”
”That’s not what got Maglor killed”, Delioron said.
”What do you want from me?”
”I want you to tell me who killed Maglor.”
”I don’t know that”, Laureanis said. Her eyes had changed color again, they were now green like forest lakes in the summer and damp with tears. ”That’s why I am now acting directly against Elrond’s orders. He does not know about Maglor, he only knows about the plot to poison him, and he wants me to drop everything now. But I can’t do that, not before I know who killed Maglor and…”
She never got the chance to finish what she was about to say. Four hooded men in dark robes wielding swords, clubs and battleaxes leaped on them from the top of the cliff behind the tent, and four more rushed out of the woods on either side of the cliff.
Delioron did not move. There would not have been a point, he could see that. Laureanis jumped on her feet and whirled, eyes wide, and drew the arrow, fast as lightning. The first of the assailants fell back with an arrow lodged in his heart, but the second attacker swung his club. It struck against Laureanis’ cheek, drawing blood. She fell and her ankle twisted beneath her as she hit the soggy ground, dropping her bow. A second later the attackers had taken it away from her.
”What do we do with this one?” asked one of the hooded figures, pointing at Delioron who still sat there like a statue. ”Kill him?”
The one who had struck Laureanis looked at Delioron and shook his head. ”No”, he said. ”We take them both to the cave.”
Someone slipped the sword out of Delioron’s scabbard and then everything went black as a bag was pulled over his head. They grabbed his hands and tied them behind his back with a piece of rope. Then they repeated the procedure with Laureanis, who did not struggle. Blood was clotting on her darkening cheek. None of the hooded figures as much as glanced at their fallen comrade. He had ceased to serve his purpose when his life had fled him.
”We have horses nearby”, said a harsh voice. ”We will stow you on them, but if either of you gives us any trouble we will let the horses drag you on the ground all the way. Understood?”
Delioron and Laureanis were pushed up on their feet and shoved and prodded down the hill into the woods. Twigs and branches tore at their clothes and scratched their skin. Both stumbled and fell on the roots and uneven ground. Relentless hands pushed them back up and shoved them on.
A short while later they could hear the snorting of horses. Then they were lifted up and hurled into the backs of two horses. The hooded men mounted the animals and spurred them on.
