Xandilif leaned back in her chair, hands against her face. Scattered before her on the table were maps, sketches, reports and scribbled letters. Diagrams of the secret passes through the mountains of Angmar in the Second Age, recent intelligence reports of the Guild of the Unkindled sending fresh troops to Malenhad, tales of columns of slaves moving through Gath Ular last winter, a diary relating that fell beasts had been seen flying over Carn Dum at midday last month..they all seemed to tumble and blend together in her mind.
She had found hints, traces of talk that could not be fully silenced about a slave revolt some 20 years past that Angmar could not fully quash…proud notes in the diaries of Angmar priests of the alters soaked in gore as the foolish slaves were recaptured and sent to serve the lord of darkness. A few references here and there to a woman, strong and resolute, and above all, desperate. A woman who seemed to resist her master’s as if she had something more then herself to fight for. Yet no name, no face, simply a ghost. Could she really be Finchley's mother? No sign of this witch, but a few scattered notes that seemed to connect her to a woman of Angmar, a High Priestess or a powerful sorceress with ties to the Unsealed bastards…a through line was slowly forming, details beginning to gather like crows, but nothing solid enough to depend on or to go to war over…and this was indeed war.
Each answer she thought she found turned out to be twenty more questions…with no end in sight. Yet there was no time for this, no time at all. She could feel the grim eyes of the Guild of the Unsealed hunting for Finchley, to hurt her, drag her off for god knew what torments. Already their gaze was boring into the back of her neck, their foul breath and dismissive laughter caressed her like a fetid wind…they were so close she could practically take them by the throat…and squeeze…and SQUEEZE.
The crash brought her to her senses as she looked down at the steaming wreckage of the heavy map table before her, SilverWand cold and angry in her hand, the bright metal practically smoking with her rage.
Behind her, Nethrida rushed into the door blade drawn, and stopped, sighing as she saw the source of the racket.
Smirking, the Gondorian sheathed her blade, Shrouded Glory. “You know, we are going to run out of tables soon, Banshee..but another victory may be tallied for the Champion of the Azure Faithful I see. What is that….Xandilif four, Furniture zero?”
Xandilif snorted and shouldered past the woman, nearly knocking her down, their armor clanging together like steel bells. “Stop honking like a damn goose and replace it” she sneered. “…or do ya need Xanderian ta bat her bedroom eyes at ya and ask ya pretty please?”
The champion stalked out the door, Nethrida glaring angrily at the Maiden of Madness as she departed. Her recent bereavement only bought so much patience, the Captain thought as she began to gather documents off the floor.
Xandilif was still holding SilverWand when she reached the open air, looking out at the blue Belfalas sea. She slowly slipped the sword over her back and sighed, dropping to one knee as she watched the sunlight playing with the sail of a Gondorian Galleon.
As she watched, the vessel seemed to change before her eyes, taking on the sleeker lines of an agile elven sloop, hovering at anchor in the seas off Lindon so many years ago. The pennants at the helm bore the crests of Imladris and Ered Luin and the golden shield of the Malladhrim. Even in disgrace military protocols must be followed.
She was lost in a sea of memory now, staring out a window of the Counting House of Mithlond. Still a girl really, but already used to shouldering the burdens of a woman, as her mother had never been bothered and her father had never been home. She was already one of the Sentries of Imladris, armed and armored even then. Her officers said she had promise, a fierce, courageous nature, a strong hand and a quick eye for the shifting fortunes of battle…if she could learn to control her rage and her resistance to authority, of course....and learn to face her childish fears.
Her squad mates were all older than she, more experienced, intimidating. At first they had cruelly mocked and dismissed her as a mewling child…until the first looked away and then found himself on his back, a mouth full of dust and a spear at his throat. Then as the newest recruit, a disgraced girlchild who was inducted too young, her views and words were automatically ignored…until she learned how to make her opinion known at such a volume and degree of profanity that they HAD to listen to her, if only to tell her to shut up. They began calling her “The Banshee” her second month in uniform.
To them it was an insult.
To her it was not.
After all, her Amil had dubbed her Gawad as a baby. Screamer. It seemed like fate to young Xandilif.
Now looking through that Counting House window, she saw her Amil, her mother, in cloaks and robes for the journey carefully boarding the ship from the gangplank…while behind her a hooded, shaking figure was carried, wrapped in heavy chains, struggling to be free of his bonds. She heard his voice raised so loudly the words still reached her ears through the hood before he was forced below decks. “One day..” he howled….”ONE DAY you will see me as a prophet, an ORACLE. NOT A MADMAN. Elrond and Galadriel LIE to you...we are doomed to fall, doomed to FAIL BEFORE THE EYE!!! THERE IS NO VICTORY BEFORE THE POWER THAT HAS RISIN IN THE EAST! Save yourselves, do not die on their evil blades in futile resistance! MASTER YOUR OWN FATES!!! I HAVE SAVED THEM ALL! I HAVE DELIVERED MERCY, NOT MURDER!!!!”
The sentries at the port stared after the madman and shook their heads, nodding to one another knowingly. After a moment they glanced up towards the open window. Xandilif looked away before catching their eyes.
It was Anerial, the Kinslayer of Thangúlhad, being sent to the west to sooth his troubled mind.
Her father.
She had looked down at the girl holding her hand, unable to watch as the ship set sail. The girl had enormous eyes and long hair tied in plaits as black as night. Her sister, Lethril, named Xanderian just a few weeks past.
The younger girl stared up at the sister she idolized, already garbed in the armor of a Sentry of Imladris. "Emig and Adar are...dying?"
Xandilif shook her head. "No Lethril, not dying, but like dying..they are being sent to the West because Adar is...broken. He is broken and because of that people in Mirkwood died. I don't know exactly what happened, the details are secret...but it was bad and they blame Adar. They SHOULD blame Adar. He killed them ALL."
The younger girl began to cry, but not about her Adar’s guilt. She had more immediate concerns. "Who will take care of me? Will we go west too? I don't want to go West, I heard my tutors speaking of it. It scares me....I don't want to go there and be dead but still alive forever. I don't want to go there, Gawad...."
Her sister shook her head. "Stop calling me that. I am Xandilif now…and you don't have to Lethr...I mean Xanderian. You are Xanderian now and we are grownups, and you are staying here, with me and the baby. I'll take care of you both. I will always take care of you, Lethril, till the West burns. We are all we have."
Xanderian threw herself against her sister, weeping into the livery of the House of Elrond. "Gawad...thank you...thank you....I didn't want to go."
Xandilif nodded, not knowing what to say and looked back at the bassinet as a nurse of the House of Elrond fussed over the baby boy. Barely weened, yet their mother had been uncompromising. She had to go with her husband, the babe would stay here with its sisters. God knows they had little use to her other than baby minding. Just yesterday she had written out that the baby was to be named Xanir when the time came, and until then, he was to be called by the mother-name Yanca. Sacrifice, in the Westron tounge.
And so she had named her three children. Gawad, the Screamer...Lethril, the Eavesdropper……and Yanca, the Sacrifice.
“Promise me, Gawad…” Amil had said to her, as she made her last preparations to leave for the ship. “You and Xanderian will tend the baby, raise him to be useful. He is the bequest I leave with you as we depart for the undying lands…that, and my sword. I have no more use of it, and it appears you shall. Try not to embarrass me, and make some use of yourself before the end of the age.”
Xanderian pulled at her hand for attention…”Gawad.…Ga…Zandaleef…the baby is our baby now?”
The young champion glanced down, and tried not to pass her rage onto the little girl....the rage that was always there. “Yes Xanderian…sort of…we promised to raise him and keep him safe for Amil.”
The girl nodded..and thought for a moment before asking "And you said she said we had to raise her sword too?”
Xandilif held the curved, elegant blade in her free hand, releasing the child to hold it with both hands. “Sort of…she left it to us, to use.”
Confused, Xanderian tilted her head. “How can we both use one sword? We hold hands?”
The Banshee almost laughed at the image and shook her head…”No, we..well…I guess….like this.” With a single brutal gesture she brought up her knee, and broke the slender blade over it, leaving it in two halves, one in each hand. Her little sister gasped and stared. “I’ll have these remade I suppose…to remember this day. Two daggers…one for each of us. One named Maur, Sorrow….and the other Iaew. Scorn.”
Xanderian shrugged, but was still unsure. “But Zandaleef..you broke what Emig told us to take care of.”
Xandilif turned her back to the window, knowing that the ship was almost out of view, and now was the time to take one last look. She declined. “Yeah, Lethril, I did. She won’t care.”
With a jolt Xandilif was back in the present, the memory dissipating like a cold fog…and now she was staring out at the soothing Bay of Belfalas again. She could see the fading light glinting off Swan Knight armor on the desk as the galleon tacked towards port. One of her hands had come to rest on the hilt of Iaew at her belt, the curved dagger she had indeed forged from the remnants of her mother’s blade. Even now Xanderian wore its twin, Maur.
Sinking to both knees, tears streaming down her face though she refused to cry, the Champion of the Azure Faithful whispered. “Yes Lethril…I broke what Emig told us to take care of…and this time I cannot reforge it…
…but she still won’t care.”
