Days of Peace by bunn

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The Treasure of Khazad-dûm

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Narvi liked to sit in this high-ceilinged room, with its tall windows and delicate pattern of blue and green tiles, and look out over Ost-in-Edhil on the warm summer evenings. Looking out at the spires and domes, made, Celebrimbor had said, in the style of old Tirion, standing golden before her in the warm evening light.

Narvi held out a hand, and Celebrimbor carefully set a warm cup in it, holding it just a little longer than he would have, once. Long enough to be sure that her old hands had managed to grasp it properly. The ring that he had made for her long ago would no longer slip over her knuckle, but that was all right. She was not planning to take it off.

“Do you remember that first day, when you took me to meet Galadriel, and I said you were all Lanky Folk?” she asked him, wrapping both hands around the cup to warm them. Of course, he did remember. Elves remembered everything. It could be very annoying at times, to be married to someone who could remember exactly what you had said a hundred years ago last Tuesday.

But there were compensations. He was sitting next to her upon the floor, lounging long and elegant upon a soft velvet cushion, with his strong slender hands wrapped around one knee, the way he did so that he would not loom over her seated in her chair. No stiff back or aching hands for him, drat him.

“Yes, I do,” he said. “I remember you sitting upon that lip of stone above the stream, looking down at me, so that I could admire your lovely legs. Then you talked of stonework and showed me that perfectly balanced axe, and I knew I’d met the woman of my dreams.”

She chuckled. “Liar. Never trust the words of Elves!”

“Well, perhaps it took me a little longer to admit it to myself,” he said and laughed. “I thought then I was too old to be thinking of taking a wife! But I was only waiting for the right person.”

“The right person, fleeting as a mayfly,” she said, testing.

His wide grey eyes looked more hurt than she expected, and she felt guilty. “Don’t.” he said. “I can’t help it any more than you can. You know I don’t think it’s any less important because it has to end.”

“Hm,” she said, and made her mind up at last. She had been a long time thinking it over, and now she thought about it, perhaps that had been a little cruel. But it was a hard thing to share, even with one so long-beloved.

“I’m thinking that — “ she said, and hesitated. Then she reached out, decisively, took his hand and wove her wrinkled, knobbled fingers through his smooth ones.

“What’s the matter?”

“There is a thing that can be done,” she said slowly. “But you must never speak of this to anyone, you understand? No-one at all must know. Will you promise, if I tell you, not to speak of it?”

“Speak of what?”

“Promise first,” she insisted. “Give me your word.”

“Very well, I promise,” he said seriously. “What is this about?”

“You know that when Mahal made my people, he made our bodies first, and then the One gave us life,” she said, feeling her way. This was not a thing that you told people about. It was a thing that those who were supposed to know, knew.

“Yes,” he said, looking at her, his dear fine-featured face puzzled. “I’ve heard the story.”

“So... this is a way in which we are not like the other children of the One. Our bodies were made first, and our spirits fitted to them. And that means... that means that we can, in time, make ourselves new bodies, in the way that Mahal taught us, and move our spirit into them.”

He blinked at her. “What?”

“We shape them from the rock of the mountain-root,” she said, relieved that the most difficult part was out of the way. She had said it, and the sky had not fallen and the ground was still firm beneath her feet. “And then we move into them. Leave the old body behind, and take our life to the new body.”

He was staring at her in astounded silence.

“Not everyone chooses it,” she said. “Some people choose to go to Mahal instead. Well, most people do, eventually. We aren’t made like Elves, to dance tireless down the endless years. And moving body is not easy, and it’s not quick, and it’s supposed to be... well, not always very pleasant. I don’t know about that, I’ve never done it. But I was thinking that I might choose that way this time.”

“Another lifetime?” Celebrimbor said and his voice was full of incredulous hope. And then with sudden caution “It’s the same sort of life?”

“Yes. Once it is done, the old body goes back to the rock, and the new one lives. But you see why you must tell nobody about this?”

Celebrimbor blinked. “Not really,” he said. “I understand it is a great secret, and I’ll honour that, of course...”

“No, it’s more than that,” she said. “There was a time when it was not a secret. I’m telling you something here from the most private lore of all our people...”

He squeezed her hand gently, and emboldened, she went on. “It was very very long ago.” She looked at his fair serious face and laughed at herself. “Perhaps not so very long ago, for you who can remember the first sunrise. But for us, it is the long past, time beyond memory for almost all of us. When we first met Men, when we taught them to make tools, when we showed them our language and they said it was too difficult, we told them freely what we could do. And they tried to take it from us. Our people were killed, people who had no second body waiting for them, people who had not yet made a choice to go to Mahal. And the Men, too, of course. They all died, and it was foolish, for they are not made like us: there was no secret that they could use... But they didn’t understand that. They believed it was something that could be stolen.”

“I see,” Celebrimbor said, thoughtfully. “So you keep it secret, lest more Men come to try to take it. You know, they aren’t all like that. I told you about my cousin Elros.”

“He chose the path of Men, yes, you told me all about it when Elrond came to visit. My memory isn’t quite that terrible! But enough of them are that we cannot have this known. They are eager enough for our gold and gems, without the prospect of a treasure that they prize far more highly. And so we keep it secret, where it cannot provoke a fight. We have no desire to slay Men for no good reason. So, I have told you this, which nobody who is not one of us has been told in all the long years since. Because you are a friend of our people, and I love you, and you, above all, should know. But you can tell no-one.”

Celebrimbor nodded. “I will say nothing of it. “Then he frowned. “But Eregion is full of Elves that know you,” he said. “They will surely notice if you are young again, and if you wish me to say nothing of it there may be speculation.”

Narvi smiled at him. “Nobody has noticed that we always have the same king,” she pointed out. “I shall go away, and then in a little while, a few years, I shall come back, and you will have another wife. Narvi the second, so like the first that few can tell the difference.”

“I think there might still be some comment... A few years?”

“I did say it wasn’t quick. A few years is nothing to you though surely: how old are you? A thousand years? More?”

“I haven’t been keeping count,” Celebrimbor said impatiently. “Anyway, it’s hard to work it out for the years before the Sun. But that’s not important. What’s important is that if I have only so much time with you, I don’t want to miss any of it. Can I not come with you?”

Narvi squeezed his hand. “No. You’re too tall for the places where I must go, and anyway, you’re needed here. I’ll go tomorrow. Be patient, my love.”

 * * * * *

Five years passed. It was a black winter, bitterly cold, with heavy grey clouds hanging low across Ost-in-Edhil, and snow on the ground. Celebrimbor was working, of course. He was always working now. It was a way to distract himself from old griefs and new ones, to throw himself into his work until everything else went away.

Just now he was making a fine silver coronet, worked with leaf-patterns, and set with gems the colour of the sunset, and when the door to the workshop swung open, he barely looked up.

“Not much of a welcome!” she said, and he started, eyes widening, and dropped a gem, which rolled across the floor and under a table. “No fire burning in the heart of winter, and no greeting at all from my dear husband!”

And there she was, muffled in a great thick cloak with snowflakes caught upon the hood, her eyes bright, her beard curled, and her dear face as unlined as it had been long ago when first he had seen it.

He threw himself to his knees, flung his arms around her, and kissed her.