THREE OF SWORDS, THREE OF CUPS
by A. Vulgarweed

An AU of an AU, a fanfic of a fanfic. Based on Murasaki99's Potterverse/Middle-Earth stories "Clouds Over Snow" and "Stars in the River." Severus Snape belongs to J.K. Rowling; Eregion belongs to Murasaki99, and Gobardon Agnen belongs both to her and to J.R.R. Tolkien. (Alive or dead? Evil or good? Canon character or OC? Both and neither - perhaps paradoxically why he's so vivid.) Just a bit of fun, really. NC-17.

He was sure that if he paused to really think about the changes in his life, he'd start feeling vertigo. So he stalked into the forest down the path to the clearing where his king had been staying with his ever-growing stack of books. If he didn't stop to dwell on the fact that he had sworn fealty to an ancient undead creature from a dim Age of Legend, who back in that distant time had killed a woman who was reborn in this Age and now Severus's wife, and that because of these two Severus himself was now somehow not quite entirely of the same species he'd been born to, he could just sit down with Gobardon Agnen and have pleasant, generally illuminating chats about history and literature and magic and economics.

As he walked into the clearing Severus saw his king pacing about, a thick book in his gloves. Gobardon was no longer entirely invisible to his eyes - instead he was a suggestion, sometimes a silvery mist in the shape of a man, breezy and chilly and graceful as a steam-plume. Softly glowing lanterns lit the pavilion where the wraith-king dwelled, more for the benefit of his subjects than himself, for he had no need of light. Though it was nearly Midsummer, Severus had brought a cloak, which he tossed round his shoulders to ward off the chill.

"Well met, my lord," he called out. The wraith-shape in its black robes nodded back to him.

"Well met, my liegeman."

"How goes the eve with you?" Severus was always startled to hear such literary medievalisms coming out of his modern mouth, but something about the King's presence seemed to request them.

"Fair enough," the King replied, and yet Severus could hear that it wasn't entirely so. For Gobardon paced, and his voice - never warm in the best of circumstances - sounded brittle and glum.

Snape ventured, "Forgive me my boldness, lord, but it sounds as though something troubles you."

The King's pauses were long. From Eregion's accounts and those of the dusty books, Severus had pieced together a guess of his age. What was a few minutes of pregnant silence to him? Not too far away, a nightingale began her watery song.

"This is a fine forest here," the King said. "Lush and full of life. The trees are full of sap and their acorns sprout quickly. The giant spiders are spinning nests for their eggs."

"Yes," Snape said carefully. For a moment he thought to relay some amusing information from Hagrid: that the wild flying Ford Anglia that had inhabited the Forest for a few years now had apparently found a mate even its battered condition, and announced itself female by giving birth to a litter of four animate bicycles. He decided that would need too much explanation, and he wanted to postpone as long as possible the moment when his liege-lord would start thinking about motor vehicles.

"The centaurs do not seem to mind being observed at their mating," the Nazgul said dryly.

"No, they're very....uninhibited." And would have enticed you to join them, probably resulting in your accidental death, were you still mortal, Severus thought but did not say.

Gobardon said nothing else for quite some time, but stared off in the general direction of the glade where Severus knew the centaurs held their noisy revels.

"Yes," the King finally said ruefully, "It seems everything that lives has its place and its pleasures."

It was a combination of a few beats of silence, the heady nectary air, and that slightest of odd emphases - or perhaps his infusion of Firstborn blood had quickened his wits. Severus realized with an odd pang just what Gobardon might be hinting at with uncharacteristic delicacy.

"My lord!" Severus blurted, sitting down suddenly on a tree stump. "Forgive me - I had not thought that you - "

"In my condition, should desire such things?" said the Ringwraith, chuckling harshly. "Ah, Severus Snape, you must have realized long ago I am not so ethereal as I look."

Snape was feeling a little vertigo after all. Voices were staring to cackle in his head - lewd old hags of Knockturn Alley markets who told their own more pornographic - more true? - versions of all the ghost stories and living-dead stories and vampire stories that had kept his little-boy self murmuring "lumos, lumos" late into the night while he watched the window in dread. "If I may ask, my liege, how long has it...."

The wraith's chill laughter lowered the temperature of the glade some small but noticeable degree. "I am not so far gone that I have calculated the precise measure of the years, nor will I speak of terrors that transpired during my long enslavement to the lord of Mordor. I will only remind you that the very shape of the world has changed."

"As unthinkable to mortal me as a wizard's lifespan is to a mayfly..."

"Mortal you? You speak without thinking, my liegeman. Think again." Inasmuch as it were possible for a creature who did not breathe to sigh, Gobardon did. "In my time, it was considered ill fortune for the land if the king were so....deprived."

"Kings have always had their privileges," Severus said, and immediately wanted to bite his tongue.

The palely luminous eyes flashed only a little. "I hope it will rest your mind to know I worked quite hard to keep my queen happy, and to be assured all my concubines were quite willing? Yes, there were those who kept slaves for that purpose - I never, not when I had my true wits about me. I was never one to find any pleasure in that."

"I can believe that of you," Snape said carefully. "Yet history bears out..."

"So I have read. Indeed, there seem to have been some innovations on the traditional privileges," he said and with a flick of his book-bearing glove he let Severus see it was a history of feudalism and there was a sub-chapter heading in bold: "Droit du seigneur."

Severus suddenly felt his mouth go just a little bit dry. "Yes, a long time ago..."

"Not by my reckoning." Was that a chuckle in Gobardon's voice? Severus earnestly hoped so, with all his heart. "Though to my eyes, it's crude and unkind, nor do I see the appeal of naive and terrified peasant maids, nor would I intrude upon the marriage rites where I am unwanted. No worthy ruler would stoop to such things."

"And yet...," Severus inquired, and then wished he could learn to keep his damn mouth shut.

"And yet I will not deny that now that I have subjects again, and such subjects as the brave and fair Failivrin..."

Rage and dread rose up in Snape like twin serpents, and choked each other and cancelled each other out, and he was shocked to hear his voice sounding nearly deadly calm, "And even I know that the Firstborn cannot bear - "

"Yes, to be taken by force could drive her spirit from her body -"

"And after we have placed our trust in you, so you would slay her again, and this time far more cruelly?" When exactly had he jumped to his feet, and how had his hand gotten on his wand in his robe pocket?

"Do you dare suggest I meant such a foul thing?" hissed the wraith, whose glove found itself on a sword-hilt.

"I don't see what else you could have -"

"STOP!" rang out a clear and commanding voice. So lightly had she tread, they had not heard her - to be fair, they had not been listening. Like an adamant moonbeam she stormed through the gloaming to place herself between them, and her voice was a reproach to both.

"Eregion, what are you doing out here? And how much did you-?" Severus gulped.

"Enough to hear two shrewd warriors who ought to know better about to butt antlers like stags. I had hoped you two were done with making busy-work for the healer." Eregion reached out to touch her husband's stunned face.

"My love," she said. "You have such an inner Gryffindor, but I think your Slytherin side would have served you better here. Surely you realize you have enough time now to hear the King out to the end of his sentences?"

"My lady, allow me to humbly beg your pardon if I seemed to dishonour your..." Eregion rolled her eyes slightly to see that Gobardon Agnen had dropped to one knee.

"Pardon granted, my liege, you lecherous lich."

Severus gasped, "But..."

"My dear," said Eregion to Severus, seeming not distracted in the slightest by the fact that the King appeared to be kissing her hand. "We are creatures of an ancient world that was young when we were young - in some ways much crueller than the one we find ourselves in, yet in other ways perhaps more...courtly? And at times, perhaps, more generous? The King, you see, would never take anything not freely given - it would not become him. But he does have the right to ask, and I to accept or refuse."

Severus realized that his mouth was open, and he belatedly shut it.

Seeing that the two black-clad male beings in her charge were no longer about to do each other harm, Eregion stepped a few paces back, taking in the forest and the glimmering lamp-light as if seeing it for the first time. "When I returned to this world, I thought I knew more than I had when I was first born - and indeed, I had learned much, and that knowledge was not taken from me. Still it seems all...inverted now. Changed. Much of what I thought was true - no longer is. Yet some things do not change. I have seen that I shall still be challenged. And that neither my healing nor my understanding is yet complete."

"You speak great wisdom, my lady," said Gobardon.

"Don't ingratiate. It doesn't suit you," Eregion snapped back. "Clearly there is something much greater than evil magic that sustains you. I had once thought you a mere perversion, Morgoth's work by Sauron's hand."

"I once thought equally unflattering things of you."

"And I - and you," she turned to Severus. "Don't get me started on you," she said with great affection. "I do not know what part we now play in the greater design. Only that play our parts we shall, even when it demands the...most unexpected." With one movement she had stepped forward and taken one hand in each of hers - one warm and slightly shaking, one icy cold through its thin glove.

"Severus, if it does not appall you too much, if you can bear it - I feel our bond unthreatened, and I would choose to accept our King's challenge - for a challenge it seems to me, and not entirely from him alone."

Snape's mouth had gone utterly dry, and he swallowed something rough and scratchy. "If....if...." There wasn't a sentence there. That was strange - there were usually several in the queue. He looked to Gobardon's shimmering dimness and Eregion's warm brightness, and to his own surprise, firmly nodded. And watched as his wife lay a slim hand briefly on the Ringwraith's chest as she turned to him. He watched that hand slide up and around the broad shoulders, watch her shapely neck arch upward as she gave the ancient King his first willing kiss in long Ages. His hand at her back, his black cloak in part enfolding her - and her other hand still in Snape's own, giving one reassuring squeeze. Time had stopped utterly for Snape as he watched her slump slightly against Gobardon, bent gently backwards - enjoying it, tightening her grip upon him.

"Am I too cold for you, my lady?" Gobardon asked softly, forehead to forehead.

"You are cold," she said. "But I am getting used to it."

This is truly absurd, Snape told himself. I must make myself be either not-here-at-all, or really here. I can't stand in this spot like a wraith myself. Almost as he thought it awareness of his own wraithstuff simmered in his marrow like a cool spring.

Severus cleared his throat theatrically. "Er. Excuse me." They both turned without breaking their embrace on one side. Was there an openness to that gesture? Before he could talk himself out of it, Severus declared, "Excuse me. I'm sure you understand. What sort of man would I be if - if-"

He swallowed again. "If I let my wife accept a challenge....that I could not face myself?"

She squeezed his hand again and cracked a smile. He slipped one hand up her arm and the other, with a force of will, with a shiver but truly, no real hesitation, along the King's shoulder. The cold grey eyes met his with first a wall of disbelief. Then the glade was filled with the ringing of laughter as tension shattered. Amid the clearing power of that sound, which seemed to hang in the air, Severus tilted his face in and tangled himself in the happy awkwardness of the meeting of three sets of lips, three eager faces colliding close, and two strong arms closing across his back, coming from opposite directions. He closed his eyes, and found Gobardon's touch to be cool and silver; Eregion's warm and gold. _Like Telperion and Laurelin_, he thought briefly, wondering if that was blasphemous, and then letting it go, into sensation. Teeth scraped his neck, beneath his ear - his wife's, they were, small and pearly; his own found a sensitive surface with no pulse beneath it but nerves aplenty, vibrating in Severus's mouth as Gobardon Agnen let out a small shuddering sound.

Knees buckled slowly, and they sank to the pine-carpeted forest floor in a tangle of limbs and robes. Struck to the heart by the glimpse of Gobardon on his back, leaves tangling in his translucent hair and lines of pain melting from his face, Severus leaned in to pay him back for Azkaban and sank his mouth into his lord's - clean and cool, tasting of snow and starlight, crackling in his mind like pure oxygen. There was a strong hand at the back of his neck, fingers in his hair. Down by his arm, Eregion's deft fingers were making short work of the King's sword belt.

As she pulled it away to set it aside, for a moment Gobardon sat up straight and touched her wrist, "Not too far away, my lady. One never knows...."

"I'm well aware," she said, with a wild and merry gleam in her eye. "But I think 'tis another sword of yours that will please me more."

Incredible, thought Severus. Have I now seen a Nazgul blush? The hand in his hair pulled him back down into silver and sweetness. After a time he moved aside slightly, so slightly, tracing kisses down Gobardon's jaw and towards his ear, in the corner of his eye watching his King meeting eyes with his wife, saw pale fingers opening the brooch that held her light-green robe fast, saw her smooth tan skin exposed and growing goosebumps in the night air and flinching away ever so slightly away from the cold touch before she recovered herself and pressed back bravely. Severus watched the pale hand dancing on her collarbone and upper chest and lingering on the biggest goosebump, a dark brown nipple that rose in response as she sighed. He felt a twinge of jealousy and paid it back with a bite, lifting himself a little to make room for the other white hand pulling at the buttons on his robes.

It's simple really, he thought as cool night snaked in under his clothes, and he pulled impatiently at buttons himself. Mustn't stop to think, simply touch or kiss or lick or nip whatever's at hand - it doesn't matter whose.

No. Not that simple. That's Her. And that's Him.

Eregion nuzzling him, wanting her turn. Her nails down his spine, wise, insistent. Her eye catching his, knowing, winking. We're working together, that look said, and Severus kissed her - suddenly and briefly. For the wild magic was in the King's eyes as he looked up at his subjects, shedding clothes for him and turning upon him their collective feral intention.

"My friends, I -" he said.

"Sshh." Eregion said and pressed two fingers to his lips; she gasped when he nipped them and sucked them. For his part Severus was already on his way down, clutching at his wife's thigh, hardly noticing that the thin line of hair on the flat belly beneath his lips was white and cool.

Gobardon sat up and gathered them to him for another three-way kiss. Pressed half against wraith-flesh and half against Eregion's back, Severus sighed into his King's ear, felt Eregion shiver as the cold lips dropped to one breast. How must that feel, to be caught between, Snape wondered, and felt the thought plunging straight to his cock, pinned hard against his wife's swaying, arching spine, slicked in sweat. His hands were not alone on her rounded hips. When he watched Gobardon without being watched back, he knew the source of the greatest need. For he himself, and she, had both been dead - but never undead. How much harder was it, to claw himself back to legitimate life? Could only be possible by the grace of -

By habit and desire his hand had wandered serpentine around to Eregion's belly and the soft thatch of fur below. She was wet. Soaking, in fact, quivering - and not alone, of course; his fingers met another prick, as hard as could be yet incongrously cool.

"Do you want to -"

"Yesss," she sighed, her brown hands bracing on white shoulders, pressing herself forward and down, as Severus moved with her, his consciousness riding between the round mounts of her arse.

For a second it was heaven, until Gobardon recoiled with a soft cry of pain.

"What's wrong?" she cried dismayed, a hand on his cheek.

"My lady," he said sadly. "You burn me."

"Oh," she said, sinking back sadly. "Oh."

Severus had not relaxed his hold around her. "Eregion...the Ring."

"What?"

"His Ring," he whispered, hardly thinking it was himself speaking, in rhythm with an illusion of singing and drumming that he heard in his mind, as if the forest were suggesting the notion to him. "Try it on."

Otherwise Eregion might have blanched, but set afire now, she would not. With the same set fierceness she'd worn all along she plucked the Ring from the Nazgul's hand and slid it onto her middle finger beside her wedding band, and exulted in the terrible coolness it gave her. "Such power...." she whispered. "'Twas my people who made it, but then...Yes, I see why you would..." And with a surge she leaned in towards Gobardon, drawing him towards her, wrapping arms and legs around him.

It wasn't difficult, Severus felt, amazed, to hold her firm against him, feeling her thighs flexing and her whole body sighing as Gobardon entered her. Watching his face over her shoulder, it was so simply right. His own fingers feeling lightly through her damp heat, brushing him as well, seeking for her veiled spot - and then he gasped as a cool, strong hand found its way to the head of his cock and held him, rhythmically squeezing as he moved with his woman's hot skin.

Through Eregion's hair he saw the moon. When he closed his eyes it still was there. He was stroking her. The other He was stroking him. And they all moved together, in point and counterpoint, as that imaginary drumming grew louder and louder and carried them all across the sky of rhythmic ages.

She tightened and arched and cried out first. In response and call-back, immediately, she bounced it to Gobardon, who stiffened and shuddered and released a cry as his long hand impulsively contracted around Snape's cock, sending him at last over the edge. Muscle tremors and visions of erupting stars held them until Eregion slumped sideways between her men with an exhausted smile.

Fucking pine needles, thought Severus, picking them from his sweaty skin and grabbing a random swatch of black fabric that lay beneath them, Transfiguring it to a thick blanket beneath them. With the edge he discreetly mopped a puddle of his own seed from the small of Eregion's back, disguising the motion as a caress and fooling no one.

"My lord," said Eregion softly, as she trailed her fingers across Gobardon's chest.

"Lovely Failivrin, I am...." The wraith-king fell over on his back, staring at the branches that veiled the clear starlit sky as he gave up on words. "Beholden."

"No," she said quietly. "You are not. Sweetness for sweetness; you owe me nothing new."

"I did not think..."

"That you were any longer fit for sweetness?" Severus interrupted, startling himself. "I thought that once too. I mean, about myself. But - "

Eregion had sat up like a lightning bolt, throwing a scrap of cloth across her body, glancing around the glade like a wild thing.

The clearing was ringed by centaurs: all laughing, flushed, hair and tails mussed. The stallions were calm and laurel-wreathed, smug; the mares sweaty and smirking and crowned in flowers, their tangled hair brushing the tips of their bare breasts. A few of them bore drums and pipes. The oldest of them, grey-bearded and proud, led a round of applause before he marched up to the three humanish creatures to present a jug of wine at their heads. Nodding knowingly, they backed into the shadows, drumming and piping and stamping their hooves.

Quietly Eregion passed the Ring back to Gobardon. Only when she took it off did Severus realize how she had changed before. "I have much to think about now," she said, smiling.

"You know," Snape said to her after they three had lain together in happy quiet for a long time, until the moon had moved a bit across the open roof of the clearing, until the centaurs' rough jug had gone around a few times. "I don't think you ever did tell us what you're doing out here in the first place."

"Oh," she said, nudging the King. "Dumbledore sent me to tell you that Hogsmeade and Hogwarts' great joint Midsummer bonfire revel is in two nights, on the Solstice, and you are more than welcome. I think he'll feel slighted if you aren't there. He's quite proud of his own realm, you know."

"As he should be," said Gobardon dreamily.

"Well, take what rest you need," Eregion said. "The summer's yet young."

And for the first time in many a year, Severus felt young himself.

~fin~