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Chapter Text

The magic seizes him in the doorway of the train carriage where he stands alone, having said goodbye to the girls half an hour before. Edmund closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, the sick anxiety clutching his stomach as he remembers how long the term will be without even Peter to make it bearable; but there is nothing to be done. Swallow it. Get on the train. 

He is snatched before he can even let the air flood from his lungs. 

*

Edmund is used to being alone, perhaps the most of all his siblings. When he lands in the gorse, the heather and the thistles bite his skin and he curses under his breath; when he looks from one side to the other and finds himself wholly alone, just him and his awful leather carry-case for the train, he is not as frightened as he thinks Lucy would be, maybe.

There is a hill nearby. He stands up, brushes soil and dirt from his shorts and blood from his bare knees, and starts walking, automatically.

Say what you want about Edmund Pevensie - Edmund the Betrayer, Edmund the Black-heart, Edmund who sold his siblings for a taste of something sweeter - but he can do many things without depending on anyone else. They make him weapons and he uses them, but he once killed a man with a kiss, his hand on the back of the neck, and then a pinch and a turn and a swift, violent twist and the sound of the bones all snapping in a row and his mouth had still been hot with the touch, and he'd left. He took the man's pen. Bastard.

The hill is further away than he thought, and it takes him most of the afternoon. This world, whether it be Narnia, whether it be someplace else entirely, is similar to the worlds he's visited before. The sun is a little bigger and heavier in the sky, and if this is summer then perhaps it is a little hotter, but the sky still dims and floods red with the sunset the same as ever. He can see the moon, the way it hangs around in winter, and rusty botanical knowledge elbows its way to the front of his brain - it must be late autumn, sneaking into winter. September or October.

"...Be thou the breath in the water..." he huffs through a fragment of prayer, something the eastern centaurs had composed for the opening of the Lion's Chapel in the Cair. How did it go? Be thou the eyes in the treetops...

Edmund keeps walking, although he wishes he was wearing something other than his school uniform, his itchy socks, his awful sixth-form summer shorts.

The hilltop is crowned, almost, with a rim of stones. They remind Edmund of the How, maybe, or of Stonehenge, a ring of roughly-hewn stones placed with clear care and deliberation, and masonry scattering down the hill, moss crawling over it; when they returned to London after the Professor's house, Edmund saw whole streets that looked like this does, houses collapsed without care for their contents, a radio broken lying in the middle of the street, part of a kitchen wall flat on its back. This devastation is older, though. Much, much older.

And when he climbs the hill there is an old man there, warming his hands by a fire.

Edmund is good at being unseen. He does not make sudden movements, not at all; that would catch attention without doubt, and it would be stupid. Instead he lowers himself very slowly, down the hill again until only his eyes and the top of his head can be seen by someone sitting on the cracked stone pavilion on the top, and he digs his hands in the soil and moss and rubs them on his cheeks, interrupting the pale whiteness of him in the setting sun. If the old man has seen him or heard him, he's a very good actor; he continues to hum, to sing low in a mumbly, grumbly voice, in a language Edmund does not know. There is a rabbit, neatly cut and flanked, speared on a long, sharp wooden prong and held over the fire, which the old man occasionally turns and prods with the tip of his thumb. The smell is lovely. Edmund has not had roasted rabbit since his last visit to Narnia, and it reminds him of long nights on the road, of the taste of desperate ale and brotherhood, of slapping Peter on the back and having Lucy dance with him, giggling, around a fire.

The old man is... strange. Becomes stranger the longer Edmund observes.

His crown is bare, his hair long and silvery-grey, although there is a blue hat sitting beside him, tall and pointed and made of a sort of soft, stiff material. Beside the hat there is a long, gnarled staff, something that looks like it has been grown, not crafted, curling wood clutching a pale white crystal within it. The old man himself is unarmoured, wearing simple grey robes and a dark cloak, although Edmund can see the scabbard on his leather belt, long, ancient, and well-kept. The sword inside must be beautiful.

"You know," the old man says, without ever turning from the fire, "When a young man misses the taste of rabbit, he would do better to come and ask for some, rather than staring like some fool without his tongue or manners."

Edmund, his face scarlet, slowly walks up the hill, caught with his hand in the jar. "I-"

"I won't eat you," the old man turns his face to him, and his expression is kind, his eyes are old, and his cheeks are wrinkled, "But I would pay you a leg for a story. Are you a Breelander? A Ranger? I do not recognise you."

"I..." Edmund has only met one man older than this, and that was Father Christmas. "I am... not."

The sword, the staff, the hat. This man could hurt him, and Edmund gets the feeling he would, would at the slightest provocation. All the same Edmund approaches the fire, the stones scattered across the pavilion, flings down his travelling-case, and perches on top of it. This close, the rabbit smells almost so nostalgic he might cry. "Who are you?"

"Greyhame," the man says at last, his blue eyes shimmering with some unknown duplicity, "Or, at least, that is how I am known to some. If you want a proper answer to that question, lad, we'd be here much of the night into the morning. Now - what brings you to Weathertop, and what name do you go by?"

"Edmund," Edmund sees no reason to lie. If he is in Narnia, the name will bring him recognition, and maybe he will be carried to some land he recognises; if he isn't, then there's no point in lying. "I saw the hill as a beacon for me to take stock. Your presence was... not what I sought. I didn't even see the smoke from the fire."

Greyhame laughs broadly, his gnarled hands on his knees, and blows something from his fingertip onto the fire. Smoke bellows immediately into the sky, and is just as quickly quenched; smoke-rings from a pipe. Just bigger. "If you think old Greyhame would find it hard to hide a fire, you are sore mistaken. No, no, I see the truth in you. So you sought a place to stay?"

"A place to wait," Edmund says. He drags his hands down his bare legs, catching his fingernails on the cuts and bruises the few hours walk has given him, running over his socks, his muddy, almost-wrecked brown oxfords. "I guess I'm... looking for someone."

"Looking for someone," Greyhame echoes, and for a moment he looks very, very old. "Well. Are we not all? Perhaps I can help you, Edmund, for all the good it will do either of us."

Edmund draws his knees to his chest, and wraps his arms around them. No Aslan, so far. But maybe that means nothing, and maybe it means everything - with Caspian, they had mucked about in Cair Paravel for days before Trumpkin showed up, and they finally knew why they'd been summoned. Maybe this is Narnia, or Archenland. This hill, this Weathertop, the architecture feels almost Narnian, almost like it could be the same land. But Greyhame. But magic. Where are his sisters, his brother? "I'm looking for my family," he says, his voice emerging far steadier than he thought it would in his head.

But then, Edmund always was the liar of the four of them. King Edmund the Trickster. King Edmund the Untrusted. He is seventeen right now, this body of his, but his mind has been grown for a very long time.

"Your family," Greyhame says. He prods the rabbit and, again, licks the grease from his finger. "Where do they reside, then? I maintain I do not know you, and your name is unfamiliar to me. Are you rangers? Breelanders? Men from the North?"

"I do not want to say," Edmund says stiffly. He hugs his knees tighter, and he feels Greyhame watching him. He must look so pathetic, so useless like this - young and pale and scabby, just a kid catching the train to school. He is only strong when he has his siblings to burrow behind, to machinate for. "We are strangers, still."

Greyhame gives him a look. "You have an air about you. I have met men like this before."

"And you will meet men like this after," Edmund stands, shaking off the clinging attention of the fire and the old man, moving to prod around the pavilion. "What is this place?"

"So you are foreign to this area, or you would know Weathertop that is Amon Sûl," Greyhame says. He takes up his pack, and removes a slim, sheathed blade, more dagger than anything else, just as long as his forearm. He unsheathes it, lets the firelight pool on the blade for a moment, and then uses it to poke the cooked rabbit. "It was a watch-tower in its time, and then a fortress for great kings. A meeting-ground. Do you like leg, or would you like something softer?"

"Leg," Edmund requests, still pacing the wider circle around the firelight, his bright-burned eyes piercing the dark. Are they out there? He shouldn't feel as safe as he does now, with Greyhame sitting, probably too old to use his sword for anything other than a walking-stick. He dips into the safety of the circle long enough to take the meat held out for him, and resumes his circuit. "I have not heard of this place."

"You are a stranger to more lands than just these," Greyhame says quietly, but with authority, and when Edmund looks around his blue eyes are sparkling with knowledge, "And Amon Sûl is not done with the footsteps of great kings, I suspect."

"You suspect," Edmund echoes. He tears into the rabbit leg. The meat is soft, fleshy, tender, and it melts across his tongue, tasting of char and sweet cooking. "You do not know."

"King Edmund," Greyhame muses, testing the name out on his lips, "Yes, that fits you, although you look barely old enough to heft a sword. King Edmund the..."

"Betrayer," Edmund completes. He feels bitter and old and he hates both of them, both of the Edmunds that feel that way, "If you want to put a word to me. Although you suspect, you do not know." It is not wise to be recognised for royalty in a strange land. Best to play along with a cracked old man, and then slink away to find his footing properly.

"I am a collector of curiosities, and you are something along those lines," Greyhame says. He stabs a slice of rabbit and eats it, delicately, off the point of his dagger. "I do not believe in coincidence. So you have been sent here, but is it for me, or is it on your behalf?"

"I am looking for my family," Edmund says stubbornly. His eyes, the fire having faded from them, catch a flash of something silver in the lowlands surrounding the hill, although he trusts Greyhame to have hidden the fire from sight still. "Nothing more, nothing less." And suddenly he feels the absence of a blade by his side, keenly, deeper than he's felt it in years. "Say, do you have a sword?"

"Not one I am willing to part with," Greyhame stands, however, and joins Edmund at the perimeter. "Have I been an old fool, once more?"

"There is something around the hill," Edmund says in the same calm, conversational tone. "Many somethings, I believe. I saw a - something. Like tack on a horse."

Greyhame picks up a stone and a piece of char from the fire, striking a rough rune on the flat of it, brushing his thumb over the result until the char-mark doesn't blend or blur. He hands it to Edmund, and the stone is hot from his palm, and for a brief, embarrassing moment Edmund wonders if Greyhame's embrace would be warm. "Give that to Estel when you meet him. He will know who you are through this."

"Greyhame-"

And then the black shapes attack.

Edmund has not been in a battle in years, but you never truly forget your first taste of blood, your first bite of steel, the first body you killed. It is an intimate thing, to kill a man, but when Edmund hefts the little slip of a blade Greyhame held to cut the rabbit, he knows as much as he knows the name of the sun that these things will not be killed.

Luckily for him, these things have already decided Greyhame is by far the more challenging of the two figures they have accosted. He is a burning light on the hilltop, his sword glowing too brilliant to look directly at, his head - still bare - crowned in starlight as he turns, sweeps his hat onto his head, and draws his sword directly through the torso of one of the fluttering shades. It shrieks like a phantom, and Edmund can't help but yell out.

That draws two of them towards him. There are too many for him to count, more than four but less than ten, and as most of them converge upon the glowing man on the hill the two that have found Edmund advance, snarling, chittering, oversized beetles, long, black, ugly swords held out in front of them.

Their strikes are tremendously powerful, but Edmund has more than enough practice fighting men who are far more physically powerful than himself. With his little dagger, he parries them at the very tip, left-one-right-one, and he can feel the heft of their blades dragging the weight of the whole bodies to one side. He jumps. He turns. This is not Narnia, and this is not Narnian air, but when he dances he remembers how it felt to be in battle. The adrenaline of it.

He has the advantage Greyhame does not, of having stared out in the dark instead of having his eyes fire-seared. As the old man roars, his sword thrust deep into the skeletal chest of one of the shades, Edmund thunders down behind him, knocking aside the blade that threatened to sweep Greyhame's head from his shoulders.

This, Edmund can do. He hasn't the weapon or the weight to properly meet anyone, blade-to-blade, but he can be an annoyance to them. He runs for one of the stone pillars, grabbing a thick twist of ivy, and scrambles up to the top of it. He perches, feeling hot blood swell under the skin on his calf, and hoots.

(--taught him. Who did? Oh. Yes. Rhinary, their owl tutor, who taught Peter diplomacy and who taught Edmund legalese, the areas in which the two of them were lacking. Rhinary was a giant owl, mind, not one of the dumb animals of the woods, and he would fly when they rode out and he taught them the calls. This is for bats. This is for Talking Birds. This one will summon every owl that can hear it - this means a parliament is in trouble--)

Edmund hoots for all he's worth, and then jumps two-footed down into the fight once more.

Greyhame gives as good as he gets. Edmund feels a little foolish, for thinking for so long that he was just an old man sitting by a magical fire; of course he isn't. Magic brought him here, to this place, for a reason.

The owls descend in a flurry of wings and screaming, and Edmund flings himself at Greyhame for all he's worth as the shades begin to scream again. The hill is still bright, on fire with daylight, although their mortal fire has long been stamped out by metal boots. Greyhame catches him around the waist.

(When Edmund was a King, he was hugged by the King of Archenland. It had been six months since someone older than him and wiser than him and not his brother had embraced him, properly, and when it was finished his eyes felt hot and red. He was thirteen, and nobody hugs Kings, especially not when they're Kings that have betrayed you.)

"Owls," Greyhame says in a marvel, and he and Edmund are hurrying down the hill, half-carrying one another. "Are you hurt, lad?"

"No-" Edmund is bleeding, quite profusely, but it's self-inflicted, "No, they didn't get me-"

"Good, or we'd have another problem on our hands." Greyhame is injured. He's limping severely down the hill, despite Edmund trying to heave some of his weight onto his own shoulder; not hurt with the blade of a sword, but there is more than one way to harm a man. "Edmund. You must not come with me."

He does not let that bruise him. He doesn't know this man. Greyhame is just an itinerant, a man without a home, and Edmund is just a traveller. They have been attacked. It makes sense to divide and conquer, it makes sense to run, it makes sense to hunt for Susan and Peter and Lucy with everything he has. "You're hurt," he says, instead of any of that, "You won't outrun them."

"I have tricks up my sleeve," Greyhame turns, grabs Edmund tightly on the shoulder, "But there is someone coming through here. Soon. I hope. You must find them, you must tell them you met me, and you must travel with them if you wish, to see me again. I am going somewhere you cannot follow - yet. With them-" On cue, the things on the top of the hill begin screaming again, and there is the sound of birds crying all as one. Owls, flapping in the air. "They will follow me, not you, lad. This is beyond you."

And he pushes.

Edmund goes tumbling down the rough side of the hill, bouncing and rolling, although training in the body before this one has him clamping his lips shut against the scream. He tries to brace himself, but Greyhame's shove was harder than he would have thought, and parts of the ruins of Weathertop are scattered, embedded into the hill itself, and when he tumbles to a stop at the base of the hill, lying still, counting his bruises, he counts his lucky stars nothing is broken. He can hear the screaming, and hissing, and the owls fleeing, tricked.

Greyhame is well away. The black shades are after him, streaking across the lands, and Edmund gets the feeling that despite the cracked old man, they will not catch him.

He rolls from his back onto his chest, and pushes himself up. "Fuck," he whispers, as he tries to put weight on his ankle and his leg buckles, "Bastardy."

It has been a long time since he was out on his own like this. Even when he would creep around the Narnian countryside on missions of his own, Susan would be with him, or Peter, and sometimes even Lucy, and if not them then members of his own force - the King's Ravens, as they called themselves, individuals who dedicated themselves to spycraft the way Edmund did. But now he is in an unfamiliar country, lying on his stomach, in the body of a summer-fat, weak seventeen-year-old, he is completely lost at sea.

He lies there for hours. He wishes he had been wearing something more practical.

(After their second return to England, sitting on the train platform winded and shocked, Peter trying very hard not to cry and Susan with her face locked up tight, Edmund promised himself he would never again travel without the essentials. Heading back to school today - is it still today? - had been the first time in three years he left the house without a knife in his back pocket.)

(He does have a pocket-knife in his blazer, but he left that on the platform, lying back in the summer heat. Fuck it all.)

The night passes in a blur. Edmund rolls under a clump of bushes clinging for survival, and listens for the return of the shades, but all that happens is a few hours drifting sleep before the sun wakes him in the morning.

He climbs Weathertop. The fire has long died, and the rabbit has been carried off by some scavenger having a lucky day, but Greyhame's camp is all still mostly there; his staff and sword are gone, but the dagger and sheath are lying on the mossy pavilion, and the knapsack lying with most of the contents - dried meat, a hunk of cheese wrapped in oil paper, some bread half-eaten and torn apart - spilling out across the ground.

And Edmund's case, too. He strips in the freezing morning air. (It can't be much past dawn, and although he doesn't know what time that's at, the whole day has the sting of five in the morning about it.) Out of the case he tugs his wintertime trousers, more socks, a warmer shirt which he wears underneath yesterday's, and then his mudboots. Thank God he remembered them. There's a wordsearch in the case, and a picture of the four of them he carries everywhere with him; he leaves both of them in there, and picks up the dagger, studying the long, smooth flat.

He's used to hunting game with a bow, but he's good at being quiet enough to do it with the knife.

The game here is canny, as knowledgeable as any hunted beasts Edmund has met, but he has himself a fresh rabbit within a few hours of the dawn, and he is able to use Greyhame's camp to the stretch of its abilities. He lies out on the earth, the ancient stones, his fingers draped across the moss, and as he drifts to sleep he has time to think: Lucy...

Chapter Text

It takes three days for them to come.

Three days is a long time to explore the land. Edmund wakes with the sun and sleeps fitfully, on top of the hill, and the fire Greyhame lit never has the opportunity to go out. He remembers sword-forms he thought were long forgotten, hammered into him and Peter by Oreius, and then later by Terian and Lorlin. Edmund used to cross blades with Bastian, often, and they would slump on the grassy hill exhausted and sweating.

It is amazing, what you never forget. The sword-forms need adjusting for the slight, ridiculous weight of the dagger, but he manages, and between foraged autumn nuts and berries and the game that crosses his path, he does not spend those three days hungry. He plots. He lies on his belly drawing patterns in the dirt. He strips Greyhame's pack of anything useful, and ends up draped in a ridiculous grey cloak that gives off so much warmth he suspects it of being enchanted.

But after three days he sees the heads on the horizon, and he dips behind one of the pillars on Weathertop to watch them. This is what Edmund sees:

The first figure, much ahead of the others, is wrapped in black, and has a dark head of hair, and buries their face so deeply in their clothes that Edmund gets the impression of nothing more than a roving crow, complete with flapping wings when the wind catches the cloak and throws it to one side or the other. They remind Edmund of Bastian -

(Bastian was two years older than him, although he felt younger. They met in their late teens, and it was years before they progressed beyond the touches, the looking, the getting-drunk-and-dancing-)

Behind the first figure come five littler ones, all bunched together, one much taller than the rest. She is a woman, Edmund sees that immediately; her hair is long and unbraided, about the length Lucy and Susan keep it in the summertime, and when a gust catches it the brown strands fly in the air like waves. She is wearing red, dark red, a beautiful colour that stands out against the land like a stamped blood-mark, although her shoulders are wrapped in a darker cloak that blends in far more. When she steps forward the dress colour peeps out, shamefully, and it reminds Edmund of his sisters in the Cair, celebrating some event or other, every eye in the known world following them irresistibly. He swallows. His silence of the past three days weighs heavy on his throat.

The remaining four are variants on a single theme. Smaller than the woman, crops of dusty gold and brown hair, green cloaks or brown, a few walking sticks bristling from the muck like trees vainly trying to cling to life. One of them is leading a broken-down old pony, laden with bags.

Edmund climbs easily onto one of the cracked pillars on the furthest side of Weathertop, his cracked shoes finding purchase among the long-fallen rubble. The hard skin on his palms has grown back with repetition, and he jumps to the top in half a moment, and perches, waiting for their arrival. The dagger he holds in his left hand. A snake in the bush, waiting to strike - the assassin's kiss, Susan called him, the hurt in the dark when you thought you were finally safe.

Because it was Susan, he didn't let it hurt him.

He isn't sure when he realises Lucy is the woman. Sooner, rather than later. Even before he sees her face he knows it's her, when he sees her wave her arms, when he sees how she walks so sure of herself, when he sees how she captures her hair in one palm and wraps it among itself, pinning it with something long and thin together. She isn't wearing her school uniform, which is how Edmund had left her at the station, aeons ago; has she been here longer than him, or around the same time? Where has she found the dress? She might be armed, but if she is, there's nothing hanging immediately obvious from her dress, and she doesn't carry anything bigger than a slim pack.

He doesn't let excitement or happiness overtake him. Edmund stays right where he is, dagger in hand, on top of the pillar, letting the remnants of his camp be the bait he knows they are. She may have been captured - it may be a trick of the mind - a witch, a magic-man, something that knows how to assume the faces of the people Edmund most desperately wants to see right now.

When the party reaches the base of the hill, the crow man says something to them, and then advances well ahead of the rest, the four little things, Lucy, and the pony only launching on their trip when he's halfway up. Edmund is tense. Every muscle in his body is ready to spring, and his mouth is both dreadfully dry and horribly wet, full of sour anticipation.

(When he killed his first man outside of battle. When he sprung for the assassin that was walking for his brother's rooms, and slit his throat, and spent the next day helping the servants of the Cair scrub the blood from the walls.)

The crow reaches the top.

His hair is shoulder-length, the hair of someone who has let it grow because they have to. Bastian wore his hair long, with a braid down the centre, a silver charm hanging within it. The crow-man is tall and stringy, the build of someone who could quite happily continue without fear of hurt or exhaustion for days. His eyes are bright and searching, and despite his first appearance, Edmund senses something deeper to him - the same as Greyhame - something more that his looks belie. It's in the ornate stitching of his overshirt. In the supple, strong leather of his boots. In the handle of his sword, beautiful and shining, as though it has never spilt blood.

When the crow-man reaches the camp he sighs, and begins an odd crab-like movement, sideways turning inwards to the fire at the centre. His boot kicks through the ashes, as though hunting for something; he kneels fluidly, and his fingers begin peeling through soot and clay. He presses his palm flat to the pavilion.

Edmund can hear Lucy's voice drifting up the hill, and it's almost too much for him to stay still. He misses his family like a limb. 

He leaps, and the crow is ready for him, a thin, deadly blade in his hand. Not the sword. They clash - Edmund ducks and turns, convinced now that Lucy's been caught up in something awful - he raises his hand up, and the blow that would have killed him glances off the flat of his dagger - he runs for one of the pillars, the easiest to climb, and he's halfway up before he feels the cold metal on the back of his neck.

"Worm," hisses the crow-man, pulling Edmund down, his voice as hot as poison; Edmund is limp, now.

(Oreius is a harsh teacher, but he is thorough. For three weeks he sends various things after Edmund and Peter in their beds, from Talking Beasts to human-shaped assassins, and every night the two Kings are dragged in front of him, blinking sleepily. "You must always know when to fight and when to run," he tells them, and he only stops when Peter and Edmund run away and spend a fortnight sleeping in the rafters above the Great Hall, unknown to anyone but themselves.)

Edmund's dagger is sliced from his hand with a quick flick of the blade. It goes clattering to the stone pavilion, and Edmund refuses to feel a pang of sadness; he is the clinical of them all. He has no weapon he prefers. Even when Father Christmas -

He stays unmoving, but the crow-man isn't a fool. The dagger presses into Edmund's neck, tight enough that he can feel where the skin will split when he moves. "Foul creature," he spits, his other arm gripping Edmund across the torso from shoulder to hip, "And I suppose you are to blame for his absence? Our pursuit? Well, I say, the Dark Lord will lose another servant today-"

"Edmund!"

Edmund doesn't turn around to Lucy. He doesn't trust her. He doesn't trust anyone. The world is just him and the dagger, and the man that holds it to him.

The man doesn't move either. "You know this thing?" He addresses Lucy over Edmund's head, twisting his body to face her. He stinks of paranoia, and travelling.

"Oh, Edmund, I thought I'd been put here on my own - of course I know him, he's my brother," Lucy, blessed Lucy, is the one at them now, pulling the man's hands from Edmund, embracing him in one of those rough, warm hugs that Edmund is no good at.

He hugs her back. His whole body is shaking, violently, as he tries to unwind from the idea that he is about to die. "Lucy," he says thickly, his face buried in her shoulder, her warm, unfamiliar cloak, "Oh, fuck, Lucy - Lucy - I thought you'd died, I thought I was here alone-"

She pulls him down. He falls. They are on their knees, and she smells of herself, and when he pulls back to see her face it is just as he remembers it, freckled and smiling and determined, her brown eyes warm and hardy. "Have you been - what's happened to you?"

"What's happened to you?"

"You know this thing?" Says the crow-man again, standing very close behind Edmund. The four little folk, dwarves by their stature but even smaller, are arrayed behind Lucy looking vaguely defensive and definitely mistrustful; the middle one, the tallest and leanest, has his hand on the hilt of a blade himself.

"This is my brother, Strider," Lucy says. Good old Lucy. Lucy, who will befriend the first thing she sees, no matter where she goes. She turns to look at the little folk, and scoffs. "You idiots, all five of you. Who did you think I'd found? Sam, for the love of God, flatten that face. You look terrible."

Edmund laughs, creaky and disused. "Only you, Lu. Fuck."

"Fuck," she agrees, and then stands, hauling him to his feet. Beside her, he feels filthy and underdressed. "Have you - you've been here? When did you arrive?"

"Four days ago," he says, swaying, gripping her elbow. "What about you?"

"Longer ago than that. I found... I fell into woods west of here, and I met... well, I met this lot, after a while," Lucy waves her arm at the little folk. The crow, Strider, still has not spoken, but Edmund feels his mistrust. "They're going to a-"

"No," snaps Strider suddenly, and Edmund drops Lucy's hand, "No. I do not know you, even if your sister does. What is your business here?"

Edmund drops beside the fire, and begins to build it up again, crumbling twig by ashen branch. "Sit down," he says, and like puppets the four little folk do, plopped right on top of their packs. "You too," he says to Strider, who sits, glaring, beside him. His dagger is still in his hand. "I'm Lucy's brother. We... god, Lu, the others-"

"I had thought," she says, and out of her pack brings bacon, salted and ready for the fire. "Keep talking before Strider there cleaves your head from your neck."

Edmund shuts his eyes, aware of the audience, his skin prickling because of it. He was the king in the shadows, always, and Greyhame had known that without needing to be told. "I landed here four days ago. There was... well, not here, exactly, but I saw a fire and I walked towards it. There was an old man here, Greyhame the name-"

"Gandalf!" One of the little ones, the golden-haired one with a dimple in his chin, erupts as though he can't help himself and is hushed by the others.

Strider curses. "Where did he go?"

"He - oh!" Edmund delves into his pocket, an action which makes Strider's fingers twitch over his blade, and produces the rune stone Greyhame had given him. "He gave me this. We were attacked that night by shades, nine of them by my count, and Greyhame and I fought, but he - I was going to follow him, but he pushed me back. He said he wouldn't make speed with me there. I tried to follow again, but I got a knock to the head, and when I was able to move again there was nothing on the hill and nobody. I had the stone. I thought - well, I didn't know yet if Lucy, if our other siblings, had fallen here too. There was no other high point for me to fix towards. I said to myself, I will stay on this hill and wait for them - and I did."

"And you found me!" Lucy chirps, hands around her knees. "It was lucky."

"Gandalf... so they are on their way, or in the area," Strider mutters, taking the stone from Edmund's palm. His fingers are much bigger and thicker. They've seen battle. "I apologise, then, for my approach to you. I thought you were the cause for Gandalf's absence. We have been... followed, here, and it makes me quick to mistrust."

Edmund bows his head; apology accepted, forgiven, smoothed over.

"Gandalf was here... and so soon," the little one, the tallest one, grasps at his chest as though it pains him, and looks up at Edmund. His eyes are clear and blue. "Did he mention anyone? Anything?"

"We were only briefly together," Edmund says, nettled at the strange closeness they affect with Greyhame, "I... Lucy."

The Pevensie siblings have a language of their own, so everyone says. Edmund and Peter are fine when separated, but together they frighten their teachers, they speak in tandem, and they have a code only the pair of them understand, and all that without High Narnian coming into the mix. Edmund can already feel the safety of her proximity settling over him, changing who he is. He is safer when she's here.

"This is Frodo, Merry, Pippin, and Sam," Lucy introduces in a rattle, "And Bill the pony. This is Strider. They are hobbits, halflings - we never had them in Narnia, but they are on a quest of great importance, headed for a house of healing close by. I followed hoping to find one of you. And to you all - this is my brother, Edmund."

Edmund retrieves his dagger when Strider trusts him enough to let him leave the fire circle. The halflings have fallen into close conversation, and Strider has folded into himself, wrapped in contemplation; he and Lucy, then, settle in together the way they always have, talking. Edmund the King returns. Edmund the Shadow, Edmund the Betrayer, Edmund the Black-heart. Edmund the Younger Brother. "Peter and Susan must be close," he murmurs, his eyes seeing scenes from far away. "I thought of you first. Who do you think of, now?"

"Susan," Lucy replies in an instant. "She's nearest to us."

The halflings are listening, not very subtly. "Your names are all so odd," says one of them - Pippin, Edmund is almost sure, "Almost like hobbitish names, but not. Is everyone in Narnia named so strangely?"

"Narnia," Edmund echoes, one hand on Lucy's knee, the other drawing runes in the dirt. "No. Even in Narnia, we were strangers."

The two mortal folk have nettled Aragorn, more than he wants them to. He has been searching in the dark ever since he realised Gandalf wouldn't be waiting for him at Bree, and wouldn't show up no matter how long he searched. Frodo with more than one companion complicated things even further - Frodo with a girl, a human girl, a girl who is more than she seems despite her fifteen years and who refuses to talk about it, is a monumental challenge for him to ignore.

He stands at the edge of the pavilion, imagining the old kings that fought here, the battles that were waged for fruitless gains in the land that stretches below him. And now this boy.

He is a boy, no matter how much age sits behind the way he holds a blade. Seventeen, human, in odd clothes underneath Gandalf's cloak, grimy and thinning already but strong. He's a wire-frame with muscles wrapped around them. And Lucy is almost more unsettling, her laughter, her jokes, her periods of silence where murk wraps around her skull and nobody can talk to her.

They're bent over the fire now, talking quietly. He wishes he knew what they discussed.

Sam approaches, stolid, stalwart Sam, his hands thrust in his pockets. "We'd need to move off from here soon," he says, quiet enough that only Aragorn can hear, "If old Gandalf isn't going to meet us."

"I can think of no better place to spend the night," Aragorn mutters under his breath, "But from now on I think we would be best to move in the dark, to rest in the day. Gandalf was attacked not three days from here, and they will be watching."

"I don't trust this fellow."

Aragorn claps the small hobbit on the shoulder. "Neither do I, Samwise. Neither do I."

The fire has become, in his absence, a little happier. The hobbits and the two siblings are swapping bawdy jokes, Lucy contributing more than anyone, Merry slapping his knees and laughing so hard he's crying - "Hah! Cut off, cut off, oh, tell it again, tell it to Sam!" - and even Frodo is smiling, pulled out of his terrible, incessant funk.

"We will sleep here tonight. At first light we'll move. Rivendell is ten days away, maybe more, but we can be fast," Aragorn stoops and takes one of the hot, ashy stones from the base of the dying fire, "I will go and see if I can find tracks, anything to tell me anything. Don't call attention to yourselves."

"Fire out," Edmund stands and folds the stones over themselves, dousing the orange flames. He looks at Aragorn just long enough for their eyes to firmly meet. "He headed north and east, vaguely, but I couldn't see beyond much in the dark."

Towards Imladris, then. Aragorn nods, keeping his face impassive, and then darts down the hill and into the brush, where he knows he can be useful, and where he knows he can change things.

Sam watches Frodo watching the boy. (Edmund.)

It is night, now, and obediently they haven't rekindled the fire, although Sam can see Pippin and Frodo shivering - they haven't the stout constitution Sam and Merry do, and they fall easily to cold. Lucy is cold, too, but Goldberry's dress and cloak are good and thick, and she wraps herself in it like a hug. The boy (Edmund) is not shivering, and he talks to Lucy when spoken to, but his eyes are distant. A half-world away.

Something about him is frightening. The way his limbs settle around him. The nearness of his dagger to his hand. "We ought to sleep," Sam says, watching Frodo watch the boy, "Or Strider'll be mad."

"I'll keep watch," says the boy. He taps Lucy on the knee. "We both will."

He must know, then, that Sam wouldn't ever let himself be watched by a stranger, and he must also know that Sam trusts Lucy. Or that they all do. Lucy is not someone who could fool him, not after those days spent with Bombadil, that horrible adventure on the Barrow-downs; Lucy's word isn't enough to wow Sam over to Edmund's side, but it is enough for him to trust the pair of them together.

He beds down beside Frodo, his back pressed against Frodo's side, and he can feel the heat leeching between the two of them. Merry and Pippin assume something similar, and are instantly asleep.

Lucy begins humming something, after a long while, after she must think they're all asleep. "He reminds me of Bastian," she says.

"Don't," Edmund's voice comes from high up; he must be perched on one of the tall structures around the rim of the pavilion.

"Well, doesn't he?"

A scoff. "What do you think I saw when I knew it was you and some man like that? Lu, I was counting my blessings."

"Oh, Edmund."

"He isn't Bastian. And anyway, it would be odd, if Bastian met me now as I am. I think we'd disagree."

"I'm sorry, Ed," Lucy is moving around, she must be, but her footsteps make no sound no matter how hard Sam strains to hear her. "I... I thought we were there. But I met a being, a powerful thing, and he told me where we are. It's called Middle-Earth, Eriador. He'd heard of Aslan, though."

Edmund laughs from on high, scoffing. "Fuck, Lu, so we'll have that old bastard to contend with?"

"Edmund."

"If you expect me to be happy about him, well, I'm not. You didn't see these shades. They were sick things, dead things, and between us Greyhame and I - that's the man your lot call Gandalf, I assume - we could barely beat them back. He had to flee. If Aslan is in this country, the country isn't a friend to him."

"You know what it reminds me of," Lucy's voice is nearer now. Sam squeezes his eyes shut, and concentrates on the warm of Frodo behind him. She continues: "It reminds me of the tea-party we went to, before we defeated the witch. Oh - sorry. Or of the Beavers. Little spots of calm, little groups of happiness-"

"Ice all around," Edmund whispers. Then there must be some signal swapped between the two, and they begin talking in a language Sam doesn't understand at all and can't begin to pick out the words from; something like the elvish Bilbo and Frodo talked, but different.

Sam doesn't know when he drifts off, but he wakes to a soft touch on his cheek. "Sam. Sam. Sam."

He scrambles up and sees it all in a flash:

Edmund, standing fearless and uncloaked, that flimsy little dagger held down parallel to the cast of his leg, in the centre of the pavilion. The only light on his face is the shine of the moon, and the fire has long-since stopped smoking. He's staring out into the dark, and his chest is rising and falling, but he's making no sound. Lucy is behind him, her shoulders pressed to his, clutching the pretty ivory-handled knife Tom Bombadil gave her, her face shrouded, uncloaked and hair braided safely behind her shoulders. Both of them look watchful and adult, a strange look on their half-grown faces.

Frodo is the one shaking him awake. His face is drawn and serious, and Sam aches to touch his hair, to soothe him, to tell him it will be fine in the end.

It won't. He knows that.

"Sam," Frodo lets his hands fall, now, and Sam can see the other two already up, pressed against the stone wall, whispering in fright to one another, "Edmund says he can see something coming."

"Oh, Edmund said," Sam grumbles more for show than anything else, standing, grabbing the pathetic thing he took from the barrow, "What-"

Lucy brings her finger to her lips, staring at him, and Sam clutters around the other hobbits, feeling even more useless than usual. He wants to grasp Frodo, to push him into the centre of the cluster, to protect him in what little way he can, but -

"Lu," Edmund says, and runs headfirst at the crumbling building on the edge of Weathertop. He flings himself upwards, clinging to vines, his feet making only the smallest noise on the rubble, and when he's up he perches like a rook, staring out. "Nine," he calls quietly, "Heading for us. They know we're here."

"Fuck it," Lucy's voice turns odd when she curses - deeper, and accented, as though she learned to do it in a different language, "And Strider might be halfway across the world."

"We aren't entirely defenceless, are we?" Edmund says in a voice that might be a joke -

And then the Black Riders approach.

Later Sam will think to be offended. They walk slowly, and they signal their approach in the sound of their beetle-feet on the stones, and they make sounds that are the approximation of breathing. Lucy stands alone, in the centre of the pavilion, her knife down by her side, her face so calm and clean that Sam thinks she mustn't be afraid; the hobbits huddle behind her, clutching swords as useless as soft cheeses.

The Black Riders get halfway to Lucy before Edmund leaps down and falls bodily into one, his dagger going to the hilt in whatever lies underneath that awful drapery. There is the sound of shrieking, awful, inhuman shrieking, and Lucy shouts "don't touch my brother, you bastards!" and the fight -

The two siblings are dervishes. "Shite," Pippin says, his voice wet, "But she can fight, can't she?"

The Black Riders are not made of flesh, Sam doesn't have to be near them to know that, and so when Edmund falls on top of one it does not die; it swipes at him with the long, wicked-looking sword, and Lucy ducks around the outstretched arm, knocking into the hand with her shoulder, and the blade falls to the ground, and she's still moving, and Edmund is around her, and he grabs her and pushes her from the oncoming swipe of another, and then he runs from the attack himself and still the dagger in his hand, and now he is making a noise, a soundless breath that keeps exhaling, and the Riders are distracted -

But there are nine Riders, and only two of them. Frodo grasps the back of Sam's shirt with his free hand. "Sam," he breathes, "Sam, I'm fri-"

They approach. Sam grits his teeth, clutches his sword ever-tighter. He will stop them. This is what he was put here for.

Frodo's scream pierces Edmund like the screams of everyone else he couldn't protect. He's been distracting, mostly, rather than going on the offence -

(Oreius was a wise teacher, too. When Edmund and Peter grew skilled enough in the basics, Oreius took Peter to teach him how to thrust a greatsword, how to heft a shield that might weigh twice as much as him, and assigned Edmund a severely-dressed faun captain, Lorlin. She taught Edmund how to fight those much bigger than him; to exhaust, to run, to dart, to hide, to fight using their body as his weapon, as much as the swords in his hands. "You will always be small," she said, when Edmund was eighteen in his Narnian body and still shorter than Susan, "But you will always be smart, too.")

So he is running. He is slashing. He is bothering them enough - and Lucy, too, who took her lessons from Lorlin just as he did - that they aren't touching the hobbits.

But there are nine Riders, and two Pevensies. One of them must have slipped through the gate. "Frodo!" Lucy screams, and turns, and she trusts Edmund to watch her back and he does, "Frodo!"

"Lucy-"

And just at that moment, rising from the side of the hill like some avenging spirit, Strider bursts forth wielding a sword in one hand and a hot torch in the other, screaming, swiping, more beast than man.

He attacks, he swings, and everything has such force behind it that Edmund is momentarily breathless, reminded again of Bastian, or of Caspian as he was in the last battle, of those men he would fight beside and sleep with - and then there is no more time for thought, as Lucy runs for Frodo, as he rejoins the fight, the shades far more cowed now fire has been brought into the equation.

Edmund is not hurt by any of their blades, and later he will be endlessly thankful for that, but on the downswing one of their gauntlets catches him on the cheek and jaw - they have been made with sharp points across each knuckle, on the point of each finger, and he can feel where they score thin, bloody lines down his cheek and neck. He makes a choked guh noise, as the collision continues, as the forearm presses into his throat, as his vision begins to star; when he falls, his head hits stone, and he finds his body impossibly heavy.

Nobody is looking at him. Frodo is moaning, screaming, but the black shades have vanished in the night with the fire, and Edmund thinks dazedly that he wanted to die of old age in one world or another -

("I might not come back," Edmund says softly, as he does every time. Bastian is in his bed, wrapped in his sheets, still naked with the dew.

"You say that every time," Bastian kisses him, "You never die. You must come back, dearest, or we'll have nobody to glare at. Don't-")

"Edmund," Strider is next to him now, a bruise high on his temple, tugging his glove off to touch the blood on Edmund's face, "Was it a sword? Was it a blade?"

Through his bruised throat, Edmund swallows. "It was not," and he sits up, knees up, grasping Strider's hand to be hauled to his feet, swaying, "I - Lucy-"

"We need to move, now," to his credit Strider lets Edmund lean against him as his head spins, "They will follow us. I won't have scared them off very far. Can he be strapped to the pony?"

"Lucy," Edmund says indistinctly, as Strider tightens his grip, "Did you forget your cordial?"

"If Aslan's here, I'll have it," Lucy declares. She's lifting Frodo, with the help of Sam, onto the back of the raggedy pony, while Frodo groans in pain. "Come on. Ten days to -"

"Rivendell," Strider says. His hands are warm when they fold around Edmund's knuckles, squeezing briefly before he lets go, "Rivendell, and the quicker, the better. This is a wound the wild cannot cure."

Edmund slides back into the shadows, the places he feels most comfortable, and wipes his face until he's free of the tears, the blood, and the dizziness. He slides the dagger into his belt, and sweeps Greyhame's cloak around his shoulders. This is not the end.

Chapter Text

Having Lucy beside him is like having a limb restored. Edmund talks to her mostly in old High Narnian, the language he falls back upon when he's stressed, and as he rests and folds up in Greyhame's - Gandalf's - grey cloak during the day, he feels himself coming back. The stinging cuts don't hurt, and the bruises of battle fade to painful but harmless green splotches down his torso.

Frodo, however, gets worse.

Edmund and Strider are the two with the most tracking knowledge, although Edmund is reticent about the depth his experience plunges to; Lucy, luckily, fights with nobody for the position of healer. She has Frodo swaddled in all the blankets they can spare, slung over the back of the pony with his stomach to the sky, his misty eyes unseeing, his moans coinciding with every weak step they make.

"I can search ahead," Edmund offers, when Strider proves reluctant to venture far from Frodo, "That is, if you like." If you trust me to.

Gratitude looks odd on Strider's worn, mistrustful face, something he's unused to having to show. "That would be good," he says, and they both watch Lucy press her dew-damp hand to Frodo's forehead, "Yes, I think that would be best."

This country is a wild one, down here in the bowl between Weathertop and the ridged mountains to the far horizon. There is safety in numbers, Edmund thinks as he watches a pack of fox kits stream into their den, but there is undeniable safety in being a single body on one's own, confident in the security of one's own secretive nature. He draws the cloak over his head, and keeps the blade close.

(In Narnia, Edmund was the Shadow-Dweller. Susan and Peter were the shining lights, the Golden, and in the dark Edmund would crawl on his belly, the snake in the bush, and bite the heel of those that least expected it. He lost his virginity - the first time - to one of his victims, the captain of a trading vessel from the Lone Islands before they came under Narnian influence. The captain, a man called Gale, hadn't known who Edmund was when he took him to bed, and Edmund hadn't told him. The envoy was presented to court the next morning, and Captain Gale didn't look at him once, and they lost the trade deal and Peter shouted at him. Edmund left for a few weeks. He was sixteen and chafing under the weight of the crown, and he spent three weeks among the Black Dwarves of the River, among some of the friends he made, losing himself in menial work where he was no better or worse than the man beside him.)

(Shadow-Dweller.)

He returns to the group periodically. Pippin is keen-sighted, almost as much as Strider, and Edmund begins to play a game in his own mind, seeing which one of them he can get to notice him first. Pippin wins more often than he thought. "Edmund," he says, his small hand tugging Edmund's sleeve, "Come on, then, say you've found someplace safe to sleep. I'm exhausted."

Edmund laughs despite himself and buries his fingers in Pippin's hair. "A hollow. Maybe a mile or two from here, but let me tell Strider."

Strider agrees, more often than not, when Edmund suggests places to stop, places to hide, crooks in the landscape that will shelter them. He vanishes often and comes back with pockets full of flowers, of long-stemmed grass, of leaves, and he and Lucy discuss cures in low voices, a world Edmund knows nothing about.

Edmund can't fix. He can only hurt. He stuffs his hands in his pockets, his stupid stupid school uniform, and plays dice with the hobbits, Merry and Pippin. Sam refuses to leave Frodo's side, even more than Lucy does. He clutches Frodo's hand, even though Edmund can see the wet sparkling sweat it causes.

Edmund can't fix. He loses at dice, and lets Merry hammer his fists against Edmund's leg, the winner's dance. He sleeps very little, for fear he will see the lion behind his eyes. Pippin and Merry gravitate towards them in camp, over the next few days, until he is bedded up between them, their heads on his shoulders.

Frodo needs constant vigil, and Lucy has to be physically torn away from her patient - but that was always the case, Edmund thinks, as he murmurs come on, sister, come on, in the old language they know like dreaming. When he looks up he sees Strider watching him, contemplative, but he has no energy left to defend himself; this is his tongue, this is his sister, this is the way he has to move.

She sleeps with her head in his lap, pillowed on Gandalf's quote. Edmund clears his throat and finds himself humming songs he's forced himself to forget, lays and ballads and dances they spun in the Cair to, songs which remind Lucy of happier times.

"Frodo is fading fast," Strider says one morning, after a full night of travel. His hand folds on Edmund's elbow, pulling him forward just a little, into a secret court of their own, "He will not make it to Imladris. I haven't the skill to string him along, and they are still hunting us."

Edmund comes obediently, his brow furrowed. "He has spare cloaks. I could-"

"No," Strider says, with a firmness that startles him, "No, Edmund. Frodo's life for one other is not a move I welcome."

"It might not be my life."

"It is a risk I doubt Lucy would allow you to take, in any case."

Edmund lets his shoulders slump, keeping his weight from the point of contact Strider keeps on his elbow. "Right. Fine. Yes. I - yes. What can I do, then?"

"We need to set a faster pace. I will lead, if you follow the back," Strider looks at him, looks into his eyes, dreadfully sincere, "Prod the little ones forward. They are hardier than they look, I promise you, and all they need is encouragement. We can perhaps wait a few days, and maybe I can call my old friends in for favours. Frodo's fate concerns more than just our band."

"I can do that," Edmund says readily enough. His head is spinning, but he's very careful to move naturally, to hide from Strider any hint that he might be tired, sick, ill. Next time they rest, Edmund will just have to sleep.

Yes.

They've been travelling for six days, and one day of Edmund and Strider's pinching speed, when they reach the troll clearing. Edmund all but picks Pippin and Merry up bodily and deposits them there; it feels safe, here, warm and untouched, these great stone creatures having hidden them from anything else that would hurt them. Edmund slumps on the ground, folded into one of the trees at the rim, facing out.

"Come closer to the fire," Strider says, from closer behind him than Edmund thought. "You're a useless ranger, tired."

"I am not a ranger," Edmund says. If he looks to the fire, his eyes will be ruined; that's what happened to him, last time. "I'm just-"

"Command," Strider says. His hand falls on Edmund's shoulder. "You seem well-used to it beyond your family. Does the King isolate himself while the people talk?"

"Yes," Edmund doesn't shake off the touch, but he doesn't welcome it. "Yes, he does, or else he is a foolish King."

"A foolish King doesn't know his people."

"A foolish King doesn't protect his people."

Edmund gets the oddest feeling that, despite the metaphors clinging to his conversation, both he and Strider mean what they say. Edmund knows it - Strider must know someone, something, that lets him know it too. "How far away is your house of healing?"

"Not far. If we only had horses..." Strider does not complete his thought, and Edmund is grateful. "But you must come nearer the fire anyway, Edmund. I can only carry one sick and injured, and I would prefer if it was not the man who did it to himself."

Chastised, Edmund lets himself be tugged towards the flame. "It's a good thing neither of us are Kings, then," he murmurs, feeling no guilt for the half-lie. What Strider doesn't know won't kill him.

Everyone in the camp is sleeping now, except Lucy. The three hobbits are curled up beside each other, laid up like three mounds of earth in their warm bedrolls, Sam nearest to Frodo, the two cousins turned in to one another; they had sung songs, earlier, about trolls and walking and bathing and all manner of pub tunes Edmund thinks he might be able to whistle, and Frodo had been lucid for long enough to laugh and tell Sam he had talent beyond what he had shown. Now in the dark the fire casts strange shadows across the stone trolls, and Edmund feels the chill of old fear.

He shivers.

"Frodo needs more care," Strider says, settling down in front of the flames, gesturing to the ground beside him for Edmund, "Lady Lucy, what say you?"

Lucy looks exhausted, grim and determined under the dirt on her face. "There are herbs I've seen travelling. I don't know what you call it here, but in Na- at home, we called it lionsbreath." She holds up a clump of it for inspection, and the sight of the herb in her pale fist makes Edmund catch his breath, caught in a whirl of introspection -

(Bastian was so clever with the cookpot. He could go out into the woods for ten minutes and return with pockets full of wild garlic, of succulent berries that burst against a thumbnail, and he would toss it into the pot with the rabbit Edmund caught, and he would laugh, and his eyes would twinkle. "My mother told me to go into herb ministry," he told Edmund, as they kissed to the scent of crushed lionsbreath between two flat stones, a paste to spread between soft, fluffy potatoes. "But I much prefer to use my skills for your pleasure.")

"Oh," Strider says, recognising the herb as Edmund does, a flash of a different memory across his eyes, "Kingsfoil - athelas, the elves call it. A healing herb. It's common in the North - in these woods. Yes, of course."

"Lionsbreath," Edmund holds his hand out, and Lucy drops a leaf into his palm, "Lu-"

She looks at him, and her small mouth turns down in pity, and that's exactly what he doesn't want. "I'm sorry, Ed. I-"

"I'll look for some," Edmund stands up, crushing the leaf between his fingers, releasing the sweet, fresh scent of the plant, like healing. Like forgiveness.

Strider latches onto his belt and pulls him right back down again. "No, you shan't. Neither of you will. Edmund, you are tired and Lucy, so are you. One of you sleep and the other one keep watch - I don't care which. I will go looking for the athelas."

Edmund scowls at him, but he'll hardly argue the practicality. "Lucy, you rest. I'll watch Frodo."

"Ed-"

"Lucy."

She frowns at him, sticks out her tongue, but she's more tired than him, and she's a practical woman; she knows her use is limited, the longer she spins out her hours. "Wake me in a while," she says, standing, prodding him in the shoulder as she passes, "You must promise to wake me."

"I promise," he says easily. King Edmund Oath-Breaker. Nobody expects a liar to tell the truth.

Strider has already vanished into the woods, as quiet as a shade, and soon Lucy is asleep and Edmund is the only one awake, being observed by the stone trolls, awake with the sound of Frodo's rattling breath in his lungs. Edmund kicks a twig onto the fire and watches the dry leaves fold up into themselves, and pulls his arms around his legs until he's tucked away, veins into membrane.

This is why he's awake when the elf comes into the clearing.

Edmund sees him first in a mist of gold, like flowers, and for one frightening second he thinks: it's the lion. He's found us already - it's Aslan - before the gold fades, leaving an aftertaste in his vision, and he sees the being for what it is. Inhuman, astride a white horse as tall and handsome as any Talking Beast Edmund has ever known, the figure stops on the outskirts of the clearing and leaps from the bare, unsaddled back of his mount. "Estel," he calls, his long hair gold, his eyes flashing, every white-adorned part of him more beautiful than the last, "Estel," and then he says a long sentence in a strange language.

"If it's Strider you seek, sir, he has gone from this place," says Edmund in rough, structured formality, standing and drawing his dagger. Every inch of his body responds to this figure like he should trust him, but Edmund has long learned that bodies can be betrayed - and betray. He coils. He will not be fooled.

The being walks closer. His feet make no sound on the ground, although he is armoured. Closer and closer, and Edmund can see the high cheekbones, the firm jaw, the squared chin that forms individual pieces from a more glorified whole, something that makes a face identifiable. Eyes as old as anything Edmund has ever seen. "You," he says slowly, and Edmund sees a long-fingered hand twisting towards the hilt on his belt, "You are not a halfling."

"Frodo is sick," Edmund spits out. Is this how the rabbits feel, when the farmers shine their lanterns into the long grass? "Strider has gone to save him. What business do you have, sir?"

At last he laughs, and looses his grip. "Estel draws all into his spell, I see. I am Glorfindel Laurefindil, but you may call me by my first name, simply. I have been sent from Imladris to find Estel - Aragorn, Strider that you call him - my friend, Elrond, the lord of that house, had a vision I was needed to hasten your journey. But if you are not halfling, and not known to me, then what are you?"

"Glorfindel!" Strider's voice comes from the woods, loud enough for the two waking to hear, quiet enough to keep the hobbits and Lucy from rousing. "So it is you, old friend!"

Edmund is left standing like a forgotten child that has abandoned some social custom, while the beautiful Glorfindel embraces Strider like someone precious. In Strider's hands are huge chunks of the lionsbreath plant, hanging like saving graces from his muddy fist. "Strider," he says, "Frodo-"

"Oh," and Strider is down, hands on Frodo's cheeks, Lucy murmuring herself awake, called by the instinct to help.

Edmund feels stupid. He tucks his knife away.

Glorfindel comes over to him, and he is so much taller than Edmund was even at his prime. "I confess I am not good at the age of mortals, but you seem older than you are," he says frankly, golden-eyed, golden-cheeked. He has freckles on the bridge of his long, Roman nose.

"I am," Edmund says, seeing no need to lie. Lying to someone like this -

"And as much King as Aragorn is, I suspect."

"Strider?"

Glorfindel smiles and it would be a laugh, perhaps, if the sun was out. "He has more names than I care to remember. But will you give me yours?"

"Edmund," Edmund surrenders. "There are more, but I think you will have to earn them."

This time, Glorfindel's laugh is true, and it sounds like the wind on a hot summer's day through the leaves, even as he covers his mouth with his fingertips. "A smile is a dangerous thing, it seems," he says in undertone to Edmund, when the noise makes the whole clearing still. "I am sorry, Estel - your healing is helping, I can feel that, but our time runs too quick for folk cures. Let me take him. The wraiths are on top of you, and you must be fast."

After that, it all happens quickly. Edmund and Strider help to heft Frodo up into the arms of the beautiful elf, astride his horse like something so separate from the pain of their chase he cannot even imagine it. Glorfindel brackets Frodo between his arms, his slim fingers wrapping around the reins, and Edmund finds himself watching them - watching the gold ring glinting below one knuckle, the way the fabric of his costume peaks at the middle of his hand, protecting that thin, translucent skin. "Glorfindel Laurefindil," he finds himself saying, one hand on Frodo's leg as Lucy steadies the hobbit with mixed lionsbreath and other herbs, "When we meet again, you will tell me what it means."

Glorfindel laughs again. A little light shines into the clearing. "King Edmund of Pevensie," he replies in kind, "You will tell me the list of your names, and we will have an accord." And with a press of his heels, he's off into the night -

And the wraiths begin screaming, far too close behind them.

"Come on," Strider says, gathering Merry and Pippin, holding one hand each, "Now the real running begins. To the Ford!"