Cradle of Stars by Dawn Felagund, Elleth

The Dark City

There is a Telerin story in the oral tradition that when the Dark One took or slayed one of the Nelyar, then those who loved the lost one would cut their hair above the level of the ears, with no thought for beauty. According to the tale, Elwë Singollo decided to accept the invitation of the Valar when he stood before his people and noticed the multitude of shorn heads and the many more where their hair had just begun to grow long again.

"Grief comes where it goes," Eärwen would say, a Telerin adage that, like most idiomatic speech, had the unquestioned weight of tradition behind words that otherwise made little sense. She used it for the frivolous disappointments of life, like denying oneself the final sweet, intending it for later, only to drop it in the dust or to find one's brother ate it first—a typical Telerin plea on behalf of happiness. From what I've read of the saying's origins, it comes from this moment in the history of the Telerin people: that to save his people from grief, Elwë brought them to grief. On the dark road between Tirion and Alqualondë, my mind reverted to the festooned slain, and the shadows beyond the torchlight held by my few attendants took on the twisted features of those who were taken and returned later sometimes in unrecognizable form. Which grief was worse, I wondered, as I lay awake in a tent senselessly erected as a barrier against the darkness: the grief Elwë delivered them from? Or delivered them to?

We timed our journey to pass through the Calacirya as quickly as possible and while freshest in body and mind. The narrowing of the sky to a star-studded ribbon overhead awakened vestigial fears of being trapped, and we hastened through the pass near to the point of imperiling the horses on the uneven ground.

It used to be that the passage through the Calacirya—uncomfortably claustrophobic even when filled with Light—was rewarded on the other side by the glittering expanse of Alqualondë, the city of the lamps. I recalled my first sight of it, thinking the stars had come to visit and repose upon the shores before returning to their heady work in the sky, only the stars were every color imaginable: lamps high and bright upon posts or strung in strands and twined around towers, or the great white stones that flashed warnings to ships at sea, or the bobbing lanterns upon the ships themselves, sliding silently upon dark waters and leaving a trail of light in their wake. As we neared the end of our passage through the Calacirya—the clouds conspiring to occlude even the comforting strip of stars—I began to dread the sight of Alqualondë more than I feared the close darkness of the pass. How would the slain city appear? I imagined all the lamps gone red as blood, a splatter of a city before the black sea.

What I noticed first was the absence of the wedge of Light that emitted from the Calacirya onto the sea. Telerin tradition claimed that holding course upon that stripe would lead one back to the shores where Ulmo first instructed their people and drew them away on their island. In reality, the Light made the water rich with aquatic plants and algae and, therefore, fish: a boon to the fishermen of the nearby city. I'd steeled my heart, knowing that shimmering road would never appear again, but its absence still dismayed me. The sea looked frightful without it.

And then I noticed Alqualondë.

Or rather, I noticed that Alqualondë was gone.

Gone: the colored lights upon the houses, the lamps that lined the streets, the lanterns upon the ships or nodding from the back of the humblest fishmonger's cart. Gone: even the lamps in the windows, held in a small mesh bag as a traditional sign of welcome.

I reined in my horse. Alqualondë, the city of lights, had gone dark.

My eyes roved the shore, trying to find the city, and I realized that the lights were still there but muffled, and for a hopeful moment, I thought that the city was but smothered in fog, as sometimes happened when cool air met warmed water. But the sea beyond was clear, the overbright stars overhead winking upon the points of the waves. And without Light, what would warm the water? No, the city was there; the lights were there, but they were smudged and dimmed somehow, as they might look if an artist had run her thumb across them. On the sea beyond the city, the dark water took that meager light and returned it as the lusterless shine of cheap tin.

I became aware that my hands could not feel the reins they held. I was numb as though the warm blood of my body had been poured out somewhere back in the dark cleft of the Calacirya, and all the objections that Arafinwë hadn't given me time to raise surfaced now.

Your wife, your family—
You were there. You. Were you truly too late? If you were, then why did you ride away?
Why am I looking in your face and not at a letter in your hand?
Are you truly guiltless, Arafinwë? Innocent, foolish Arafinwë?
They are your people—you were so proud of your accentless Telerin.
Your broadmindedness.
Your tolerance.
So proud that you fucked early in your Telerin marriage, broke the laws, subjected yourself to marital pleasures out of purported concern for your wife's happiness. What of her now? She is yours, not mine.

Not mine.

What of her now? This is your family, your mission, your mess to clean. Not mine.
You dare to send me? And what of you?
This is your place, you coward—