The blade slipped deep into Raenesviel's chest. The pain was as instantaneous as ever any wound could be. She did not think of the betrayal at that moment. There were no flashes of anger. No burning need for instantaneous vengeance. There wasn't even confusion. There was merely a short blade between her ribs, near to her heart and how it danced close with her survival.
And then there was the icy waters again. She would have gasped even though she'd only just come from a deep dive in them, so cold was the realm of Ulumô. Alas there was the wound. Only dimly was she aware that the weapon had remained in Richolir's grip as she lost her own on the ship's gunwale. Unlike some of the finer works of poetic story-telling wrought by elves, men, dwarves and even the halflings, her mind did not wander listlessly about over unimportant things, such as her fore years or her blood visibly staining the water, further marring her diminishing view of Arien in the sky. She was too furiously busy pressing upon the wound, kicking with her feet to right herself and regain the surface.
The dark patch that was the hull of the ship loomed near and she half-panicked, attempting to move water with her left hand. New kinds of pain lashed every bit of flesh from her waist to her scalp. The idle and unhelpful thought that strayed through her mind in those moments was that despite the morbidity that had seen her onto the boat in the first place she very much still wished to live.
The struggle brought her above the surface for just a moment and then she was plunged down with only half a breath and more than half a mouthful of sea water. Her legs would not work right. Her right hand was steadfastly pressing to the wound and would not help with the swimming. She knew bleeding. She knew cold. She knew they were dragging her down as no other force in all of Ea had been able to do since Cuivienen.
Above all other things, Raenesviel knew pain. She jabbed the thumb of her right hand into her new wound and shrieked the last of her air out into an almost laughable burst of bubbles. Whatever it was that Eru had put into pain that awakened fires where none had long been did its work. She clawed over the pain, over the cold and the injury. She caught the surface and kicked herself towards the boat. Her fingers caught at the rounded timbers, seeking purchase. But it was sliding past her, thwarting her grip and promising her end. Only later would she recall that when she had climbed the side of the boat to give Richolir his prize and he to give her the knife that she had briefly wondered about the sails already being raised. Could they see into the bottle and know that she had been successful?
She shrieked again as the stern of the boat swiped past her offering no more handholds than the port flank had. She whirled, knowing and wishing otherwise that she could at least see land. But no, she was now closer to where lost Numenor had been than to the nearest shores of Eriador. Indeed she might have had more luck reaching the legendary crushing ice of the Helcaraxe than of slogging safely out onto dry land. She was as dead now as she had been since Mbelekoro first came to the kwendi.
- - -
What came first to her mind was pain. There was a dull, throbbing ache that started somewhere deep in her chest and pounded like the drum of some misbegotten hill man. It flared in her left shoulder before shooting up her left arm to her very wrist. That was where she lived yet; between the beats of her heart when the pain ebbed for the tiniest of instants.
A great pressure faded away from her wrist and she felt her fingers gently work their way into sand, gripping at something that wasn't there. Gradually the cold retreated from her, replaced by heat though the ebb of the aches was no greater. She willed herself deeper into the stupor of pain and, if truth be told, the mire of self pity. Tempting was the oblivion these things promised. But the roar of waves and the baking sun upon her insisted that she was not dead and was no more to be given to the depths than she was to be delivered across the hidden paths of the sea unto Aman.
Slowly, as if weighted with stones, she rolled onto her back and through agonies drew her left arm down along her body that she might then embark on the task of sitting up. The side of her face that had been pressed into the sand burned with the still clinging particles. She opened just slightly her left eye to a dazzling blur of golden light. She had been out of the water for some time. The rags that had been her garments were dried on her left side and her hair was braided with sea weeds, cemented with sand and salt and hardened by the sun. Everywhere the her skin touched her own skin was a burning mess of anger.
She leaned back on her right hand, staring, one-eyed and blearily across Gajar as waves she could not possibly have managed alone crashed upon the sand many lengths away from her. Though she knew better than to wipe at the sand on her face she did it anyway and evoked ferocious pains in her chest and shoulder as well as new kinds of hurt in the flesh of her right cheek. But in the end she was able to open both eyes. For some time she watched the miniscule shadows in the dimples of sand near to her until she knew from Arien's passage that it was not yet noon and she was on a southwesterly facing shore. She could remember worse times in her life.
She turned her attention to her left arm and the puncture in her chest. Her wrist was much bruised as if she had been shackled by one hand and her shoulder was not working well as if the bones were no longer in their proper places. Ignoring the pain as best she could she brushed tattered cloth from the wound and found a hole in her chest packed tight with something colored to the darkest green. There was no bleeding.
She frowned and looked at the marks in the sand down the slope from her. There were deep tracks mostly marred by the passage of her own body being dragged. She glanced around the water line but it was unmarked by any other signs. She inhaled deeply until her whole chest hurt and finally looked up the sandways from her. Upon the berme made of sedge grass stood a tall man with the high features of a Sindar. Upon his brow was settled an expression of brooding and darkness. His eyes were cast far out into the sea though and rested not the least upon her whom he had dragged from it.
"Is this your work?" she touched her wound as she remained seated, but twisted so as to look up at him.
"My wife." Raenesviel looked back out to sea, nodding slowly.
"My thanks to she that bound my wound and he that dragged me from the water then." She sagged a little, trying and failing not to think of what had brought her to this.
"As always it is deed and not words that count."
Ignoring that she continued to watch the waters off into the west. She thought perhaps she spied a vessel with white sails at the very edge of everything and perhaps even above it. To the south there were dark clouds and though there was no sound of it here she suspected there was thunder rolling over waves.
"I am in your debt in any case."
"And will you again try to steal your way to the Undying Lands?"
Raenesviel did not pretend surprise. "I would never steal. But I do make my own way now."
"And when you were given the choice of the far west in years gone by was it seeming your own way to go thither unto the realm of the Valar?" She frowned at his words but did not answer. "No," her rescuer said. "I did not think it was so." Now thunder did shake the air to the south. "You have done a grave thing, abaro. You who never once toiled for the Greedy One have done your foe a service."
She turned to look at him now, and with a sharpness that might have given any mortal pause before continuing. And yet he went on. "You more than most know that there is far more to Arda than that which the Eldar remember. You more than most know that Mailikô touched where no Eldar has ever looked. You more than most know that Námo has only offered doom where damanded and then only as it means for a certain party. You more than most should know better."
"I do not understand."
"You must then learn what you did wrong. You must right this wrong. Or everything you have sought shall be visited back on you by your chosen enemy. You who troubled not at the stirrings in Beleriand when the better part of your blood kin was whipped to war and wrath must now bear alone the virtue of doing right and knowing your failure. Seek you the meaning of Lammoth."
"Echo?" she asked foolishly.
"Lammoth," her rescuer repeated. She winced as he spoke for the storm had grown close indeed and thunder assaulted the waters that were turning dark and angry. When she opened her eyes an instant later he was gone from the berme and she was left alone to ponder, heal and hunt.
