Movement I: Prelude

    Haleth paced in the halls of the keep, blue eyes snapping with anger and worry. She stopped a young boy running errands for the soldiers, carrying arrows to replenish the archers’ supply, and asked, “How goes the battle?”
    “Our people fight well,” he said, then ran back to his post. She repressed a silent snarl of frustration; everyone she had questioned had evaded her, fearing her father’s wrath should he find out his daughter’s interest in the battle.
    She stalked back to her rooms, a proper lady’s bower to do needlework and to brew herbs in, but nothing more. Certainly not to learn the arts of war.
    Slamming the doors shut in irritation, she ignored her attendants’ whispers, knowing that they all knew what had irked her so badly. Haleth would have spat on the immaculate, polished wooden floor, but her training as a woman held her in check. In defiance of her absent father and of her manners, she spat anyway, again ignoring her attendants’ shocked looks. Her skirts swirled about her as she turned away from the women.
    “My lady Haleth—” one of them began. It was the chief of her attendants, Lady Bríani, whom her father often held up as an example to her—and thus the most irritating of all of the women in the keep.
    “Go,” she ordered curtly, still refusing to acknowledge their presence and jerking a thumb at the door. “I have no need for you.”
    They quietly gathered up their needlework and left, no longer offended by her rudeness. They had grown accustomed to their lady’s fiery temperament, better suited to a battlefield than a lady’s bower.
    What good will needlework do when the men fight at the gates? she seethed silently. Herbs I can see a use for, but there are plenty of others who are willing to concoct the brews I am forced to make. Why cannot I fight? Why must Father be so blind?
    She respected and dearly loved her father, Haldad, but he kept her caged and behind bars until she thought she would scream. She longed for freedom, and open skies, not the detestably safe bower where she could cower and scream if even a spider crawled inside.
    For what Haleth was most terrified of was to die forgotten, without glory and honor, to be considered only as breeding stock to bear sons, who would claim the renown she herself longed for. She did not fear death, for death was Eru’s gift to the Edain. No, she feared to die without glory, to die without gaining some measure of immortality, to live on in songs.
    She shut and barred the door before walking with a lynx’s silent grace to an ironbound, locked wooden chest. It held her most precious and best-kept secret, one that no one, not even her twin brother, Haldar, knew of. She unlocked it with a key that hung on a chain about her neck, then pulled out what was to her a treasure beyond the wealth of kings.
    It was a simple steel sword with a leather sheath, with no precious jewels or gaudy ornaments to make it a prince’s weapon. But it had been wrought well in some smith’s forge, sharp and well balanced.
    It was a warrior’s weapon.
    She laced herself into equally simple but functional leather armor, awkwardly tying the laces at her sides. Then she drew the gleaming sword, gazing at her own reflection in the polished and oiled metal. Running one finger along the edge, she smiled, and did not cry out as the keen blade cut her finger. However, she did have to resist the urge to suck on it as a child would. She let the blood drip on the floor unheeded as she held out her sword in a salute as if facing an invisible opponent, then mock-parried a hack to her side.
    She ran through what little the arms instructor had taught her before her father had put an end to the official lessons, and silently snarled when she heard booted footsteps outside her door. Hoping that they would leave, she froze, and would have cursed when she recognized her brother’s tread.
    “Haleth!” The voice confirmed her guess, and she sighed as he pounded upon the door. “Haleth, open the door. It’s locked.”
    Precisely—and for a reason. She debated on whether to let her brother in or not, and grimaced, knowing that her decision all boiled down to one question.
    Would he keep silence or divulge her secret to their father?
    “Haleth!” He pounded again enthusiastically, and Haleth winced. She had grown accustomed to the soft tapping of her attendants, and she knew that she had to let him in before he attracted more unwelcome attention. Carefully laying the sword down, she crossed the floor, unbarred the door, and then dragged him inside before he could say anything. She slid the bolt home again, ignoring Haldar’s raised eyebrows and crossed her arms.
    “What do you want? Or did Father send you to fetch me so that he may lecture me upon my unwomanly behavior?” She knew that she was being nasty and sarcastic, but her frustration refused to back down.
    “Haleth, if you were a little more gracious, and behaved more like a civilized woman rather than a savage orc—”
    “So is that the new rumor now? That Father wed an orc, and that’s why I’m such a Valar-forsaken woman? Or wait, I’m a halfbreed orc, which is why I so obviously am a servant of Melkor, and hate the Valar.” She was trembling as she picked up her sword, unwilling to look at her brother in the face, but gathered her courage and glared at him. He winced, and looked away from the passionate fury burning in blue eyes.
    “Haleth—” She ignored him and surged on, all of her ire and anger at being mocked for years coming to the fore.
    “Go away if that’s what you’ve come to tell me, Haldar. I’m more than sick of hearing Father and the other women of the hold lecture me, not to mention the elders. That doesn’t include the men and boys snickering behind their hands, mocking me and Father both. I don’t need to hear more from you!” Her outburst finished, she ignored him and the tear at one edge of her left eye. “Unless you have something new to add that no one else has said before, go away, Haldar,” she said, her voice shaking. “I’m sick of listening to everyone scold me.” The tear dropped, and Haleth rubbed her eyes.
    Now I have lost so much control that I must weep… but she could not bring herself to care, and she turned away from Haldar, waiting for him to leave.
    Haldar was startled that Haleth was weeping, but he pitied her brittle strength. One day, it would break, and he had no desire to see Haleth’s bright spirit dimmed. “Haleth, I’m sorry,” he said, looking at the floor, trying to resist the impulse to hug his sister as he always had. Then he crossed to her and put his arms about her. “I’ll speak to Father—”
    “Haldad will listen to you as he will not to his daughter,” she said, only cold bitterness and rancor remaining from the fire that had raged before. “Much as I love Father, he is blind.”
    “What do you want, Haleth?”
    “Immortality,” she whispered. As he gasped at her audacity to go against Eru’s will, she continued, “Oh, not as the Eldar are immortal. I want to live on in songs and in stories as myself, not because I bore a son, who single-handedly defeated legions of orcs. I want glory, honor, and renown. I want to be respected as Haleth, not Haldad’s daughter, not your sister, and not the mother of the son I will be forced to bear!” Her voice spiraled upwards in volume and pitch with each word, and she jerked away from Haldar, unable to bear his pity. Compassion and sympathy she might have accepted, but never pity. As she pulled away, her bloody finger brushed Haldar’s hand, and he started when he felt the wetness.
    “You’re bleeding,” he said gently as he noticed her finger.
    “I’m not frightened. And it doesn’t hurt.” The response was automatic after having dozens of people hover over her if she even pricked herself with a needle. Instead, she spun to face him with the blade in her hands, holding it with instinctive grace. But arrogance—no, not arrogance, hubris—showed in her face as well, pride that she was the daughter of Haldad, descendant of a line of warriors and of the Second House of the Edain, and he knew what she would ask next. He raised one hand as she opened her mouth to speak, forestalling her speech.
    “No, Haleth,” he said. “The little instruction you gained from armsmaster Malron is more than enough. I will not contribute to this folly and madness when you might die on the battlefield if I give you this aid you seek.” He turned and left for the door, but stopped when she shouted at his back.
    “You’re the same as all of them! I thought at least my twin brother would have understood,” she said, while thinking that Haldar knew less than he imagined. “I thought that at least you were not as blind and foolish as Father—”
    “Don’t speak ill of our father, Haleth,” he warned.
    “Why? Because it is unwomanly? I am already unwomanly for desiring to do battle; what does one more transgression matter?
    “I would have thought that you were wise enough to understand Father’s concern for you, or that the battlefield is not for women!”
    “I am not ashamed to admit that I am not a coward!”
    “Hold your fool tongue still!” Haldar was not as quick to anger as his sister, but when he did, he was a match for Haleth. “Battle is not glory, Haleth. It is only death, death, and more death, nothing more and nothing less. It is evil, Haleth. It is an insatiable beast that feeds on agony. Think you that you could stand the pain, the blood, the dying when I barely can?”
    “I am not afraid, brother. And who are you to judge that because you are male, you can stand more than I can? It was always I who faced our father when in mischief, always I who could stand more pain!”
    “Battle is not only of physical pain, Haleth!” he flung back. “It brings suffering and grief. What is glory beside that?”
    “Easy for you to say!” She dropped the sword, heedless of the wooden floor as she gestured angrily outside where the men still fought. “You are not expected to only breed heirs, to do nothing until dead of old age or dead from childbirth!” Haleth raged, with a strange tone in her words. “You will always be remembered with praise, for you are Haldad’s son and heir. But I? Nay, I will not be remembered, or if I am, it will only be because I bore a son to do great deeds! It is you who will live on, you who will be honored, while I am forgotten, left to my fate as a woman—left to my fate to bear children and then be forgotten, disappearing from memory and time!”
    Haldar finally recognized the emotion that lurked in her words.
    Terror.
    Before he could examine this observation yet further, she spun around, leaving him only a view of her trembling back that still remained unbowed despite her anger and terror. Haldar was taken aback at her outburst, and realized the depth of his sister’s fear.
    “I’m sorry, Haleth,” he said again.
    “Go away, Haldar,” she said as she picked up her sword. “I’m not in the mood to talk with you anymore.”
    Haldar sighed, and quietly left the room, wondering how he could help his sister, to relieve the darkness and fear that weighed upon her so heavily.
    Or if he even could.

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