Mantle of Shadow XI
Renhir
Bree
February-March 3019 TA
(private)
Renhir
Bree
February-March 3019 TA
(private)
Scornful looks dogged Renhir’s steps in the common room after night fell so he carried a tray to his room and ate in solitude. He did not mind. There was only one person here whose company he might seek and he was not prepared to face him yet. At once, there was too much and too little to be said and his fellow Ranger’s obvious displeasure did little to encourage him to even try. Leaving the fireplace bare, he lit only enough candles to see his meal and he shielded the moonlight with thick curtains drawn over the windows.
A bottle of wine and a leisurely smoke cleared and calmed his mind and at last, he was ready. Taking the second bottle in his hand, he paced down the hall and rapped his fingers lightly on the door. Moments later, Daerandir’s green eyes peered at him through a narrow slot in the door, ever on the watch for danger.
Relaxing at the sight of him, Daerandir swung the door open and gave him an expectant look. “What do you want?”
Without speaking, Renhir pushed gently past him and stepped into the room.
“Yes, do come in.” Daerandir’s words exuded sarcasm.
The room was a mirror image of Renhir's own and opposite in every way: a roaring fire blazed in the hearth and the small table was lit by a tiered candelabra. The same supper was laid out on a plate but this one was half-eaten while Renhir’s plate had been barely littered with stray crumbs.
Making himself at home, Renhir sat at the table, uncorked the wine and filled two cups, sliding one across to the man who sat before him. Daerandir left his own untouched. “Are you going to explain yourself? How could you do that, even you?”
“I don’t answer to you,” Renhir huffed.
He crossed his arms. “If that’s how this will be, you can leave now and save us both the trouble.”
Renhir raised a brow and nodded at the half-eaten food. “Something’s already troubling you by the looks of that.”
“What could that be, I wonder?” Daerandir responded testily.
Sipping his wine, Renhir shrugged back into his chair. “There are many troubles in the world of late, near and far…”
“Indeed.” So they agreed on something. “And you are one of them. Where the hell have you been?! No one has seen hide nor hair of you since the attack in Hollin and then you turn up beating a man bloody in broad daylight…”
So they had come to it at last, what he did not want to speak of and dared not share. He glanced at the bright flames dancing and flickering in the hearth, and the shadows in between, teasing and taunting him. “I’ve been...on my own.” It was all he would say on the matter of his disappearance and abandoned duty and all that had happened in the North Downs.
“That much is clear. You are not fit to wear the raiment of a Ranger.” Clearly unimpressed, Daerandir lifted the proffered cup of wine at last and drank. “You were someone to be admired when we met, Renhir. You fought bravely. You put yourself one the line in front of others with no thought for yourself. What happened to you?”
“Life happened.” Then, “and death.” The inevitable end.
Daerandir was silent as he digested this. “If that is all you can see, then you are blind. Do you not remember what it was like when we tamed the wilderness together? We could do the same again, if only you would open your eyes.”
Renhir exhaled through his nose. “How are you still such a tiresome, hopeful fool? Tell me you don’t still believe that nonsense about a lost king who will reclaim his crown.”
“I do. I have to.”
“It will never happen. The kingdom is dead.” There was little doubt in his mind.
“Someday, I hope you are wrong. And then, I’ll never let you forget it.” A smirk crossed Daerandir’s face as he spoke, then faded as he shifted in his chair and leaned forward. “There was a call to ride south. Have you heard?”
Renhir pressed a weary hand to his brow. “Yes. I heard.”
“I mean to go." An unasked question hung in the air--will you?
Renhir shook his head and needled his knuckles against his brow. “You will find nothing but death if you go.”
“Then so be it.” How calm and fearless he was to brush death aside so easily. “You will not come, not even for your brother?”
“No. He is safe behind the walls of the White City.” Again, he spoke with certainty.
“Only as safe as the city itself,” Daerandir countered. “If it falls, then what?” Here was one of the many unspoken questions that had whirled about both Rangers’ minds and each came to a different answer.
“Then we are all doomed anyway. I have as little hope for this errand as I do of becoming king myself,” Rehir scoffed. “I’m tired, Dae. I am not meant for this fight anymore and I cannot keep pretending to be someone like you. I am not. We both know it.” He had not spoken to anyone so frankly like this in a long time. He did not know how he had missed it, that he wanted to let everything spill out, to bare himself and stand for judgment but he reigned himself in. There were some things he could not tell anyone, not even Daerandir. “I am not here to have the same old arguments with you over and over.”
A tilt of his head to the side sent a tendril of hair falling over Daerandir’s brow and he shook it away. “Then why are you here?” he asked quietly.
“You know why.” The undertone in the breathy words were clear. Brown eyes met green and now he hid no truth but allowed Daerandir see him, broken and untenable, fading from the light. A drowning man struggling to breathe. “Please.” Renhir was not accustomed to begging and the word scratched his throat and the shape of it felt foreign on his tongue. “Let me stay tonight...Just tonight. I’ll leave by morning.”
If only for a night, let him shed the mantle of shadow that haunted him and be the person he had once been, the one Daerandir had known when the roamed the wild woods together and Renhir might have been worthy of him once.
An impatient breath escaped Daerandir’s lips. “I should send you away.”
“Then do it,” Renhir challenged him, kneeling on the floor before him. “As if I am yours to command." He had been, once. The Ranger before him had been able to tame and temper him, the only one who ever could. He wanted to know, needed to know, if Daerandir could still draw out what little goodness remained. If not, Renhir would know that redemption was far out of reach. “And if I am not fit to be a Ranger, then take the cloak off my back.”
Eyes as green as a sun-washed forest gazed steadily into his. Before Daerandir even spoke, Renhir saw the familiar glimmer of surrender in his eyes. “You are not mine to command. Not anymore. But I want you to stay,” came the whispered confession.
Daerandir touched the nape of Renhir’s neck and pulled him in. Renhir released a soft sigh against the lips upon his. His heart thrummed unsteadily in his chest, rebelling against his careful control and becoming a thing not entirely his own. Hardened and cold as stone, it softened and warmed like clay in coaxing warm hands. If anyone could reshape the battered and broken thing, it was Daerandir. Always and only him.
If Daerandir asked him to go south again, he might have said yes. Certain that Renhir’s will was unshakeable when his mind was made up, he did not. They spoke no more, no more arguments to unfold. There was a story yet to untangle between them that did not need words. Renhir was undone beneath his touch. For one last night, the only shadows to touch him were their own cast by faint, glowing firelight.
In the morning, Renhir kept his word as promised. By dawn, he was well into the wilds where he belonged. He left his grey cloak and blazing star behind on the bed and knew then what he had known all along. Daerandir was a flimsy bandage on a bleeding wound he could not heal. Even he couldn’t pull Renhir back from the brink anymore.
Renhir could no longer straddle the blurred line between light and dark, torn between his past and future, struggling to reach for redemption. There was no saving him; there never had been. He was too far gone. There was only the shadow and the strength it sowed in his veins. There was only death waiting to swallow them all in the cold light of day.
