[500 powerstones bonus chapter]
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Upon the vine-hung bridges of Caras Galadhon, Kaen walked clad in a white robe graciously provided by the Elves. Beside him moved the fair princess Arwen , the Evenstar ; wherever they passed the Elves bent their heads in greeting and spoke of them as prince and princess.
Caras Galadhon is layered like a living thing: the forges and smithies below, the dwellings and market-tiers midway, and the noble platforms aloft. By Galadriel's subtle craft, save for the smithing quarter, flames are reluctant to kindle within that wood; the place keeps always a temperate spring about it. The folk there are a mingling , Sindar and Noldor, with Silvan ways woven in and a new culture of Galadhrim grace has come of their union.
At each turn Arwen told Kaen of some small marvel. They had descended from the high terraces above to the lower streets where the clang of hammer and anvil never ceased and the voices of debate drifted ,craftsmen arguing the worth of some new device or design. Arwen smiled as she said, "The Noldor are famed for their lore; their cunning with craft is unmatched across Middle-earth. Even Dwarves must needs look with respect."
Kaen only nodded. "So it is said," he answered; for the Dwarvish Vala Aulë and the skill of the Noldor had long been allied as friends across many ages.
They left the craftsman's quarter and took boat upon the moat that circles the mallorn trunks. Dappled light fell through leaf and bough; Kaen's mingled gold-and-silver radiance shone beside Arwen's cool, pale light, and the two lights, meeting, wove together like threads of dawn and moon. As the skiff moved, the banks of the moat woke; grass and sapling quickened, green growing as if spring's very breath had been blown upon them. Both paused, and each read surprise in the other's eyes.
"Lady," Kaen said softly, wonder shading his voice.
Arwen reflected a moment and then led him toward a quieter place. She quickened the boat with a word, and it ran out beyond the settled avenues to a little copse of unworked mallorn trees. There, beneath four great trunks, they stopped. The light about them still interplayed, the two radiances drawing, as if a hidden affinity tugged them near.
"I have never seen this," Arwen murmured. "It is as though something in us answers to one another; when left to itself our light reaches forth and seeks union."
Kaen's face took a grave and eager look. "Let us try," he said. "Let us purpose to blend them. I have a sense….a feeling….that together they may be more than the sum of either."
They exchanged one brief glance and shut their eyes. So they stood, and the mind-songs they set to one another drew their lights close; thought touched thought, and heart answered heart. A new power, formless and wordless, was born of that meeting. It had neither color nor hardness; it could not be handled as a smith's iron might; it was known only to the spirit.
With measured will they guided that nameless force into the four mallorns that stood about them. The ground gave a low rumble. Roots like cords and knotted coils stirred; trunks lengthened. The four trees grew with a speed to astonish the eye. Their roots rolled forth and lifted the two sleepers as from a cradle, drawing them upwards until both were borne a little from the earth. The commotion called the Elven wardens.
Guards came swiftly and stood dumb before the marvel. Present likewise were Galadriel and Celeborn, Glorfindel and Elrond, Gandalf, Cathril, Artemis, and others; each beheld the change and was struck dumb by what had come to pass. The four mallorns had altered before their eyes. Their trunks, once pale and white as moonlight, took on a sheen of silver. Their golden leaves paled to white, and in that whiteness, under sun, a goldlike glow seemed to tremble. These trees towered larger than the mallorn of Galadriel and Celeborn's own hall; they were, it appeared, of a different making.
Between those four great trunks Kaen and Arwen stood, held upon a natural dais of braided root. Slowly their eyes opened. In each other's gaze the watchers saw something deeper than mere weariness , a drain upon the soul. Speech failed them; both fell back as if the meeting of lights had spent their strength. Kaen caught Arwen as she sank, and then he too crumpled, and the garden rang with the cry of fear.
"Kaen!" "Arwen!" voices rang. Artemis, radiant and winged, swept down, and many hastened to their aid. It was Elrond who most feared for them; he watched unblinking, sleepless, guarding those he loved as a father guards his children.
Half a moon later there came a great sky-cleaving sight: Saruman the White, borne upon a great eagle, arrived in Lothlórien. He had seen the four altered mallorns and cried that they were of marvellous making. From those trees a slender thread of power yet lingered; Saruman drew from them a sample which he and the others set upon, pondering and probing.
They found, to their astonishment and joy, that the power created by Kaen and Arwen bore a likeness to the wrought crafts of the Valar , a seed of creative power not wholly of Men nor wholly of Elves. Whereupon Saruman, who had once apprenticed to Aulë and held in his mind the lore of craft, conceived a design. He gathered the essences of many trees , their sap-souls, their hidden salts , and, with the slanting remnant of that living light, tried to fashion a seed. He labored to bind dyes and root-virtues, calling on old arts both of stone and of word.
At first the seed sprang like a thing quickened by true soil; it put forth a surge of vital sap and grew with a vigour that amazed. Yet when that little thread of living light was spent, growth stalled. The tree made thus reached only to a height of three ells ,small and tender; it gave off a faint holy breath and could ward away only a thin blade of evil. Yet even so, that was promise enough to set all hearts aflame: if such a sapling could stand, then who might say what a forest of such seedlings might do?
While Kaen and Arwen still slept, their friends and counselors made ready. It was spring, and the breath of the year quickened all leaf and root; they needed the sap of wood and leaf where the season waned. Galadriel sent her folk to gather the essences of Lothlórien's mallorns; Celeborn rode to Thranduil and bade him gather from the northern fringes of Mirkwood what life he might spare; Rivendell and the Ashenwood, the Dales and far places likewise sent their harvests.
Thus all the north of Middle-earth grew busy: scholars and woodwardens, smiths and herbalists, each bent to the same toil, that before the end of spring they might gather as much sap and seed as might be had.
At length, in the high hall of Lothlórien, Kaen and Arwen stirred and opened their eyes. Around them the mallorns kept a hush, and the first single shoots of green seemed to lean toward their light as if in thanks.